Media Ethics and Regulation Reference_d0639326 5c04 4d80 856e 9ef1d93908a7

FROST JOURNALISM ETHICS AND REGULATION
‘This book is a timely, comprehensive and indispensable handbook for journalists and
a rallying cry for all those who believe ethical journalism is not just possible but an
essential part of a free media in a democratic society. Using real life examples, Chris
Frost’s book is both a practical tool which deserves a place on every journalist’s desk
and an unbeatable guide to the origins, failures and successes of media regulation in
the UK and beyond.’ Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists
JOURNALISM ETHICS AND REGULATION SECOND EDITION

As technology changes traditional journalistic practice and democ-
ratises news gathering, the journalist’s path through the ethical and
regulatory frameworks has become tougher to negotiate. As high-
profile celebrity cases such as Catherine Zeta-Jones’ vividly illustrate,
conflicts between the law, ethics and the public’s right and desire to
be informed are not easily resolved. It could also be argued that a
market-dominated approach has dispensed with social responsibility
and given priority to profit over ethics, and to circulation over public
responsibility.
This comprehensive volume addresses the ethical considerations,

dilemmas and challenges the practising journalist faces, each
minute, every day. Providing context and practical advice, it explores
an area of crucial importance for the 21st century, thoroughly
equipping the reader with the information and tools to negotiate this
challenging area knowledgeably, practically and responsibly.
Cover photograh by Reuters/

J.P. Moczulski Main features
• Comprehensive coverage of core ethical issues, such as the
CHRIS FROST ethics of news gathering, intrusion and privacy, and the difficulties
Chris Frost
is Professor and Head of Jour- of achieving truth, accuracy and objectivity under pressure
nalism at Liverpool John Moores • Provides journalists with the tools to make informed ethical
University. Before moving into decisions in their day-to-day working lives
JOURNALISM
teaching he worked in newspa- • Looks at what underpins ethics both in terms of everyday, minute-
pers for more than twenty years to-minute decisions and from where – historically and philosoph-
as a journalist and editor. He ically – codes and practices have emerged
ETHICS AND
is the author of Media Ethics • Extensively illustrated with topical examples and synthesises the
and Self-Regulation, Reporting major recent research into the area
for Journalists and Designing for • Considers the differences in regulation (both self- and statutory)
Newspapers and Magazines, is a and practice between print and broadcast journalism and how
REGULATION
former president of the National these distinctions are blurring and changing
EDITION
SECOND
Union of Journalists and chairs • Provides detailed coverage of the main codes of practice and
the NUJ’s Ethics Council. regulatory bodies – PCC, Ofcom, BBC, NUJ – in the UK and beyond
This book has been written for students

and trainee journalists, working journal-
Second edition
ists and editors, and indeed for any
student of the media. L
P
www.pearson-books.com J Longman Practical Journalism
9781405835367_COVER.indd 1 28/2/07 14:55:03

JOUR_A01.QXP 8/2/07 10:49 Page i
JOURNALISM ETHICS
AND REGULATION
JOUR_A01.QXP 8/2/07 10:49 Page ii
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JOURNALISM ETHICS
AND REGULATION
Second Edition
C H R I S F R O ST
Head of Journalism
School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts

Liverpool John Moores University
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First published 2000, as Media Ethics and Self-Regulation

Second edition published 2007
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C O NTE NTS
Abbreviations ix
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
The structure of the book 5
1 What are ethics? 9

Why do we need morality? 10
Why do journalists need professional ethics? 11
Classical theory 12
The language of morals 17
What is a right? Why do people have them? 19
Further reading and support material 21
2 News: towards a definition 22

Practical problems 22
What do other people think is news? 24
News and ethics 34
3 Morality of reporting 37
Press freedom 37
The free press and democratic society 39
Morality and a free press 43
Freedom to publish 43
Why the media are in business 44
Morality and society 45
Morality and commerce 46
Morality and the consumer 47
Limiting what information journalists can gather 49
Limiting how journalists gather information 51
Limiting what information journalists can publish 51
Guaranteeing the quality of information published 51
4 The good journalist 56

What is a good journalist? 56
Journalistic duty 58
Separation of publishing and journalism 63
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vi Contents
5 Truth, accuracy, objectivity and trust 65

Morality and truth 66
Truth and accuracy 68
Truth and objectivity 71
Truth and impartiality 74
Balance and impartiality 78
Sensationalism 79
Policing the truth 82
Impartiality and bias 86
6 Privacy and intrusion 88

What is privacy? 88
The language of privacy 99
What would a privacy law look like? 101
Intrusion and harassment 103
Case studies 106
7 Gathering the news 112

Straightforward means 112
Misrepresentation 113
Clandestine listening devices and cameras 115
Harassment 117
Sources 118
Bribes, corruption and conflicts of interest 123
8 Reporting the vulnerable 131

Protection of minors 134
Vulnerable adults 143
9 Deciding what to publish 149

Suppression 149
Identification 153
Issues for print 157
Issues for broadcast 160
Issues for online 164
10 Taste and decency; harm and offence 165

Causing offence 170
11 Professional practice 174

Dealing with people 174
Plagiarism 184
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Contents vii
Personal lives 184

Guidelines 185
12 Regulation 187
Accountability systems 190
What may be restrained? 195
Accountability 195
Regulatory systems 196
Working with different styles of media council 200
Enforcing ethical standards 201
13 History of print regulation 204

Towards regulation 209
Another commission 215
More changes at the Press Council 218
All change 220
A change of government 230
14 History of broadcast regulation 234

Independent television 235
The market moves in 240
2003 – a year of drama 242
15 Codes of conduct as a regulatory system 246

Personal codes versus public codes 247
Moral basis of codes 247
Framing codes of conduct 249
Codes of conduct 250
Building codes 251
Rights-based elements of codes 252
Functionalist-based elements of codes 253
Public interest 253
Codes and professionals 254
16 Regulation systems in the UK 257

The law 257
Regulatory authorities 260
Press 260
The Competition Commission 267
Broadcasting 267
European Broadcasting Union 276
National Union of Journalists 276
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viii Contents
17 The experience abroad 278

International protection 278
Death and torture 289
Global code of ethics 290
Cross-border collaborations 290
18 The future 291

Cross-border working 294
The internet 294
Multi-media journalism 296
Convergence 297
Appendix 1 PCC Code of Practice 298

Appendix 2 NUJ Code of Conduct 303
Appendix 3 NUJ Working Practices 305
Appendix 4 BBC Code of Ethics 307
Appendix 5 International Federation of Journalists 308
Appendix 6 Ofcom broadcasting code 309
Appendix 7 TMAP Guidelines 310
Appendix 8 Addresses for regulatory bodies 312
Glossary 313
Bibliography 314
Index 323
JOUR_A01.QXP 8/2/07 10:49 Page ix
AB B R EVIATI O N S
AP Associated Press (a US news agency)

ASA Advertising Standards Authority
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BCC Broadcasting Complaints Commission
BSC Broadcasting Standards Commission (or Broadcasting Standards
Council. The Council became a commission amalgamated with the
BCC in 1997)
BSE Bovine spongiform encephalopathy
CJD Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease
EBU European Broadcasting Union
ECU BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit
ESC BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee
GBNE Guild of British Newspaper Editors (now the Society of Editors)
GPCC (BBC) Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee
IBA Independent Broadcasting Authority
IFJ International Federation of Journalists
IoJ Institute of Journalists or Chartered Institute of Journalists
IRN Independent Radio News
ITA Independent Television Authority
ITC Independent Television Commission
ITN Independent Television News
NCTJ National Council for the Training of Journalists
NPA Newspaper Publishers’ Association
NS Newspaper Society
NUJ National Union of Journalists
Ofcom Office of Communications
PA Press Association (a news agency supplying national and international
news to regional newspapers and broadcasting stations)
PC Press Council
PCC Press Complaints Commission
PPA Periodical Publishers’ Association
Pressbof Press Standards Board of Finance
QC Queen’s Counsel
RA Radio Authority
SDNS Scottish Daily Newspaper Society
SNPA Scottish Newspaper Publishers’ Association
SoE Society of Editors
TMAP Teenage Magazine Arbitration Panel
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AC KN OWLE D G E M E NTS
Dedicated to my wife Vanessa and my children Emma, Julia and Alice. My thanks
also to Mike Nally for his help and unfailing support when I really needed it.
I would also like to thank the helpful people at the NUJ, the PCC, and all those
who have given me permission to reproduce material from their publications.
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P U B LI S H E R’S
AC KN OWLE D G E M E NTS
We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:
Sage Publications Ltd for Table 4 (reproduced as Table 6.1) ‘The right to privacy in
a TV programme’ from Kieran, M., Morrison, D. and Svennevig, M. ‘Privacy, the
public and journalism’ Journalism 1(2) p145–69 © Sage Publications 2000; the
Press Standards Board of Finance for the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) Code
of Practice, ratified 7 August 2006 (reproduced in Appendix 1); the National Union
of Journalists for the NUJ Code of Conduct and the NUJ Working Practices (repro-
duced in Appendices 2 and 3); the International Federation of Journalists for the IFJ
Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists (reproduced in Appendix 5);
the Office of Communications (Ofcom) for the Ofcom Broadcasting Code (repro-
duced in Appendix 6); the Teen Magazine Arbitration Panel for the TMAP
Guidelines for Coverage of Sexual Subject Matter in Teenage Magazines (repro-
duced in Appendix 7).
In some instances we have been unable to trace the owners of copyright material,
and we would appreciate any information that would enable us to do so.
JOUR_A01.QXP 8/2/07 10:49 Page xii
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I NTR O D U CTI O N
This book intends to plumb the depths of the professional morality of journalists.
Not, I hope, in the way that journalists are often accused of plumbing the depths,
but in a wide-reaching and thoughtful way that, whilst unlikely to find any answers,
will at least illuminate some of the problems and allow more accurate navigation
around them.
The idea of this book first came to me because I was having great difficulty
finding suitable texts to recommend to my students. A number of ‘How to . . .’ jour-
nalism books contained a little advice about ethics but most were of the
breezing-through style which mirrored ethics teaching on most journalism courses
until very recently.
When producing the first edition, I was conscious that only the bold, foolish or
the pompous would attempt to write a book on journalistic ethics, and nothing has
changed for this edition. I started the first edition because while there were several
good books on ethics from US authors, hardly anyone in the UK had produced a
book on ethics, mainly because most journalism was taught in relatively short
training courses and it was only with the introduction of undergraduate pro-
grammes in journalism in the early nineties that journalism teachers were able
expand their teaching to include ethics.
There were a large number of books written by Americans for Americans. In the
USA, journalism has been an area for serious study and informed and educated
practice for some considerable time. But the differences of approach there, particu-
larly the implications of the First Amendment to the Constitution and the power this
gives to the media, means that interesting and important though many of these
books are, they are of limited value to British journalists and journalism students.
Lambeth’s Committed Journalism (1992), Klaidman and Beauchamp’s The
Virtuous Journalist (1987), Meyer’s Ethical Journalism (1987) and Media Ethics by
Christians et al. (1998) are all books that I found instructive to read and am happy
to recommend. However, the differences in culture and background between the
USA and the UK mean that their perspective tends to waver in and out of focus,
leaving the reader faintly confused. Too much is taken for granted. The American
journalist’s ethical roots are firmly bedded in the First Amendment and no further
manuring is required. Of course many a cynic will say the British journalist already
has his or her ethical roots firmly bedded in manure and that it will require the
ethical equivalent of dynamite to move many of them away from the ‘don’t let the
facts get in the way of a good story’ style of journalistic morality.
Journalism books in the UK until very recently were very practical in nature.
Mansfield’s The Complete Journalist (1935) was one of the few early UK books on
journalism and this was joined in 1950 by The Kemsley Manual of Journalism
(Hadley et al.), produced to support the Kemsley Editorial Plan, a revolutionary
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2 Introduction
training scheme for journalists in Viscount Kemsley’s newspaper group. The British
Press by Robert Sinclair, was published in 1949 and this looked at ethics and the
personal conduct of journalists. But its approach was very general and it is now
more interesting for the light it casts on the journalistic ethics of the time than for
the usefulness of its advice.
The National Council for the Training of Journalists was started in 1952 by
employers’ groups, trade unions and editors and on the back of this steady formal-
isation of journalism training, the early 1960s saw a sudden flourishing of books
about journalism. Whilst they were all solid primers on journalistic work, there was
little about ethics. It is the growth in three- or four-year undergraduate courses that
has done the most to expand thinking about journalism ethics in the educational
establishments. A three- or four-year course allows the time to develop a critical dis-
cussion of standards in journalism in a way that was impossible before. The
tradition on the one-year courses was to discuss ethical issues as they arose in the
students’ practical work. However, students often came to believe that ethical prob-
lems were rare and involved lengthy debate instead of being pervasive, often
requiring instant decision against deadline. An excellent example of a journalism
textbook produced before undergraduate programmes really took off is Practical
Newspaper Reporting by Geoffrey Harris and David Spark which was the standard
primer during the 1980s and 1990s. This was first written in 1966 for the NCTJ and
a second edition was published in 1993 (and reprinted in 1994). By then the Press
Complaints Commission had been launched and with it, an industry Code of
Practice. This was included as an appendix in the book and a new Chapter 19 had
been included on ethics. It was entitled ‘A Note on Ethics’ and that is all it was: two
and a half pages about issues. The first page is largely about the new PCC and the
subsequent pages bring up matters raised by PCC complaints covering issues such
as addresses, freebies, illustrations, plagiarism and promises. This is not to criticise
the book, which was typical of its type and time, but to draw some conclusions
about the general view of ethics at the time (less than fifteen years ago).
The first UK books on ethics were published in the early 1990s (Andrew Belsey
and Ruth Chadwick (eds) (1992) Ethical Issues in Journalism and the Media,
London: Routledge; and Elliott Cohen (ed.) (1992) Philosophical Issues in
Journalism, Oxford: OUP). These contained essays on elements of journalistic ethics
that were very useful. However, as a series of essays, they lacked cohesion, nor were
they specifically aimed at journalism students.
Journalistic ethics have only very recently become a seriously regarded subject for
study by practitioners and journalism academics in the UK (see Stephenson and
Bromley 1998: Chapter 10). A two-hour session on a wet weekday afternoon half-
way through a one-year course was very much the standard teaching for would-be
journalists until towards the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. Even now there are
few one-year courses that do more than a couple of sessions. A letter from the NUJ’s
Ethics Council to scores of colleges teaching journalism, offering guest speakers on
the subject, saw only a handful of responses. In a letter to journalism colleges in
1996, the late Sir David English, then Chairman of the PCC’s Code of Practice
Committee, drew attention to a report from the National Council for the Training
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Introduction 3
of Journalists about their National Certificate Examination which claimed that

many trainees seemed unaware of the provisions of the PCC’s Code of Practice.
‘There was even a suggestion by trainees that the code could be disregarded if a
better story was the result’, reprimanded Sir David in his letter. He pointed out that
this was a matter of grave concern, and asked trainers to make clear to students
what the Code of Practice had to say. But the people taking this exam were working
journalists with about two years’ experience on a newspaper in addition to their
training course.
It was out of this background that I wrote the first edition of this book. Since then
things in the industry and journalism education have change enormously. Although
it is only ten years since I started writing the first edition, the average journalist is
now a graduate; many have been on courses that now discuss ethics using this or
one or more of the other excellent books available, such as Keeble or Sanders, and
the regulation system has changed considerably, particularly for broadcasting.
Because of this change, I felt it was time to revisit the book, to note the develop-
ments and changes made within the industry and to try to draw in some of the
research that has taken place in those ten years. It should also be remembered that
any book of this sort is only a snapshot of the collective thinking of journalists and
that this is constantly changing. There are some areas where the issues are clear, but
others where thinking is in a state of change. It is this debate within the industry and
the wider public that is important and that I attempt to identify.
There is a difficult balance to be struck when writing a book of this sort. I hope
it will be read by practitioners, both students and professionals, who want to gain
a clearer insight into their work, as well as academics seeking to discover why a
body of intelligent people who often claim to be driven by pure and noble motives
seem to fail both so often and so publicly. To achieve this aim, I cannot produce a
mere handbook on good and bad journalistic practice filled with bullet-paragraphed
truisms. This would be of no more help to the practitioner than any of the previous
books or a copy of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) Code of Practice and
would be rightly discarded by academics. Yet how many practitioners will be pre-
pared to devote the time necessary to wade through thousands of words justifying
or attacking some subtle point of moral philosophy as it applies to journalism? I
hope that quite a few will, because any move towards a more ethically-based jour-
nalism must be driven by journalists if it is to be sustained. For too long, too many
journalists in the UK have tended to shrug their shoulders and assume morals are
for someone else and then wonder why there are calls for legislation on such issues
as payments to witnesses, and privacy. Regular rows about media intrusions into the
lives of celebrities such as David Beckham, Catherine Zeta Jones or Naomi
Campbell have raised public concern about the way the press so often intrudes into
the private lives of public figures. Calls for legislation are made at regular intervals
and are widely supported by the public even if the government fears the press too
much to consider their introduction. Clearly, in the light of such widespread public
interest and concern, journalists cannot ignore or remain indifferent to the ethical
aspects of their profession. The industry has been lucky. Whilst there have been
some outrageous invasions of privacy, they have not been so sustained as to force a
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4 Introduction
government to act, particularly a government so concerned with its media image as

Tony Blair’s. But the willingness of such figures as the Prince of Wales and Tony
Blair to complain to the PCC about invasions of their children’s privacy shows that
the pressure on the media has stepped up a gear or two. There must also be concern
about the creeping of legislation into the area of protection of privacy. Law and
changing opinion make it easier to prohibit the publication of names under the guise
of protecting privacy.
We have a choice in the UK. Either we will have to have legislation to deal with
the excesses of the media, particularly the tabloid press, or journalists will have to
get their act together and start to behave responsibly. Journalists can only do this if
they are educated to consider the issues raised by their work. All too often the
general consensus seems to be that ethical issues are a once-in-a-blue-moon problem
– crises that pop up from time to time requiring considerable thought before a
decision is made. This, of course, is not the case. Ethical problems are dealt with
almost on a minute-by-minute basis in journalism. They happen so regularly that
many of the decisions are part of the natural working pattern and require no par-
ticular conscious thought process. If we make an ethical decision not to steal, we do
not need to remake that decision every time we encounter something that is not
nailed down. But the habitual thief does not have such an easy time as his or her
decisions (which must be taken on every occasion) are not ethical but entirely prac-
tical: Is the item worth stealing? Is the physical effort required worth it? Am I likely
to be caught? Many journalists seem to go through the same logistics-only processes
in their work. Shall I invent this part of the story? Is the mental and physical effort
required worth it? Am I likely to be caught? Only the punishments for those caught
out seem markedly different. Time in prison for the thief, a slap on the wrist from
the PCC and possibly disciplinary action by the editor for the journalist. Only by
making the moral decision not to invent stories in the first place can the journalist
avoid mental turmoil of this sort during the writing of every story.
Of course journalists are often under pressure, or at the very least perceived
pressure, from others, such as editors, to stretch ethical elasticity to its limits and
sometimes beyond. There have been suggestions that print journalists should have
the PCC’s Code of Practice written into their contracts of employment and the PCC
has already asked proprietors to do this for editors. This idea does spark some ques-
tions. For instance, if a contract of employment contains the Code and an editor
instructs a journalist to breach the Code, can the editor then sack the journalist for
breaching it? What if the journalist refuses to follow the instruction? Can he or she
be sacked for insubordination? How can journalists be expected to adhere to a code
which they have not been involved in drawing up? The PCC Code of Practice is
agreed by editors only and neither journalists nor their representatives are consulted
about the process. The National Union of Journalists believes that journalists should
have the right to refuse assignments if they believe the assignment will breach the
code of practice. This is a view supported by the Culture, Media and Sport Select
Committee in its 2003 review of the PCC.
Broadcast journalists are more constrained than colleagues in print in that they
are obliged to adhere to standards of fairness and accuracy that are laid down in
JOUR_A02.QXP 8/2/07 10:49 Page 5
Introduction 5
law. This may be a reason why our TV and radio is often less likely than a tabloid
newspaper to intrude on a celebrity’s privacy.
Many journalists and editors seem to believe that others can do the job of taking
moral decisions for them; that they can continue to behave badly and avoid new
legislation if they get the Public Relations right. Many editors and other commenta-
tors seem to believe that by having a PCC that is seen to work by government and
public, there will be no need to bring in laws. But a self-regulatory system can only
work if the editors want it to work. At the moment they do – but often for the
wrong reasons. Many seem to want to be ethical only when it is marketable. Few
editors and proprietors seem keen to employ ethical journalism if it interferes in any
way with their position in the market and their ability to make profits. In a market-
dominated culture that has dispensed with social responsibility, I find it difficult to
understand why anyone should be surprised that our newspapers give priority to
profit over ethics, circulation over public responsibility. We can count on one hand
the number of times over the past ten years that the press has restrained itself for
entirely unselfish motives.
Broadcasting has a better reputation, but even this is slowly being eroded as the
market becomes the dominating factor and digital TV spreads competition and the
fight for audiences. The public service broadcasting ideal and the need for high-
quality commercial television is being diluted by the increase in the number of
channels. We are in the era of ‘cheap is best’ because it is all about profit. Ethics
come a very poor second when the journalist is under constant pressure to get the
story regardless. We should also consider why it is acceptable to have legislative
control of broadcasting ethics but not of print. What is it about newspapers that
suggests self-regulation is good enough when we are told that only statutory regu-
lation will do for broadcasting?
Unless a journalist’s understanding of ethics and journalistic morality is firmly
rooted, then he or she will have neither the educational background nor the incli-
nation to stand up for what he or she believes is journalistically right against the
pressures of profit and a threat to career development. Even with a strong ethic to
support them, journalists will still, on occasion, go for the sensational or invasive
story. I hope that after reading this book, they will at least think about it and know
why they breached their ethics in the name of profit, career, malice or whatever and
will be able to decide whether it was worth it.
The structure of the book
This book is planned to lead the reader through the elements of journalistic morality
in a way that I hope is helpful and interesting. It is run in two major sections. The
first looks at journalistic ethics while the second looks at regulation in the UK and
elsewhere.
The journalism ethics section opens with several chapters discussing the nature of
ethics and attempting to provide the tools needed for the practitioner to make sen-
sible judgements. The second half of this section discusses a number of issues, often
JOUR_A02.QXP 8/2/07 10:49 Page 6
6 Introduction
using case studies as guidelines. It would have been good in these chapters to show
how the philosophical guidelines introduced in earlier chapters can be used, but lack
of space makes it impossible to do that in every case. The section starts in Chapter
1 with a short appreciation of some of the classical philosophers from the early
Greeks to the modern day. I believe that whilst these philosophers may seem a long
way from modern journalism, their thinking can help us come to some conclusions
about the way journalists work and morality in general. It is very difficult to discuss
journalism ethics without being aware of what journalists are trying to do and so
Chapter 2 looks at what news is, how journalists identify it and why news is
abstractly different from the event it is describing. It also examines what interests
people and helps to sell newspapers and magazines. The freedom of the press is
probably one of the most abused clichés in the English language. Raised almost
exclusively on occasions when there has been an abuse of that freedom, it is at the
root of the journalist’s need for ethics. Chapter 3 looks at the links between morality
and a free press and how society often uses the law to enforce elements of morality.
In the chapters that follow I look at a range of professional issues that help explain
how society has developed Western-style journalistic ethics. In Chapter 4 the
relationship between the press and the public is explored whilst examining what
makes a good journalist. Chapter 5 attempts to examine the complex relationship
between truth, accuracy, and objectivity.
Chapter 6 looks at privacy and intrusion. Privacy has been the fastest growing area
of ethical concern over the past fifty years and the one that draws the most confused
attention from the public. Celebrity revelations sell news. Intrusive reality TV shows
such as Big Brother attract big audiences, but people still think the press is too intrusive.
Chapter 7 looks at news-gathering and the ethical dilemmas this can pose, from
harassment through to deceit and pretence in gathering information. Vulnerable
groups in society require particular care in news-gathering and their problems are
covered in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 looks at the particular problems of publication and
broadcast. This covers issues such as manipulation and watersheds. Chapter 10
covers the problems of harm and offence; issues of taste and decency, and deciding
what is right to publish or broadcast. Chapter 11 looks at a range of dos and don’ts
– issues that need to be considered in day-to-day working that spin out of the issues
mentioned in other chapters.
Chapter 12 switches the reader to the second section of the book, moving from
ethics to regulation. This chapter identifies different regulation systems and explains
how they work. Chapter 13 provides a history of press regulation in the UK and is
followed by Chapter 14 on broadcast regulation. Chapter 15 introduces the concept
of codes of conduct and how they work in the UK.
Chapter 16 examines regulation systems in the UK and how these bodies (the
Press Complaints Commission, the Office of Communications, the BBC and the
National Union of Journalists) operate. In the final two chapters, 17 and 18, the
examination of regulation is expanded to other countries and the future. I consider
the problems raised by the growing opportunities for journalists to work across
international borders, the use of new technology and of course the World Wide Web
and the implications for the future for ethics regulation.
JOUR_A02.QXP 8/2/07 10:49 Page 7
Introduction 7
I hope I have produced something that is readable, interesting and helpful.

Throughout the text there are some exhibits, case studies, tables and figures to help
to illustrate the major points. Most of all I hope this book will help explain why
more emphasis should be put on good journalistic ethics if we are to avoid more bad
media-regulation. High standards of journalism can only be found from within, not
imposed from without. Journalism can only improve if journalists and editors them-
selves are allowed to take ethics seriously.
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Chapter 1
WHAT AR E ETH I C S ?
This chapter discusses:
• Morality and the need for professional ethics

• Some of the theories identified by classical thinkers on morals
• How the key moral theories can be applied to journalism ethics
Ethics is defined by The Concise Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the science of

morals, treatise on this, moral principles or rules of conduct’ (1964: 415). The word
comes from the Greek éthikos meaning ‘of or for morals’. Morals are described by
the same dictionary as being concerned with ‘the distinction between right and
wrong’. This comes from the Latin mos (pl. mores) which means ‘a measure or
guiding rule of life; as determined not by the law but by men’s will and pleasure’
(Lewis and Short 1900). Clifford G. Christians et al. define ethics as: ‘The liberal
arts discipline that appraises voluntary human conduct insofar as it can be judged
right or wrong in reference to determinative principles’ (1998: 7).
In practice, ethics is a way of studying morality which allows decisions to be
made when individuals face specific cases of moral dilemma. At their most praise-
worthy, the journalist’s tussles are going to be between the right of the public to
know and some other moral tenet – perhaps the invasion of an individual’s privacy
– which would militate against publication. This right of the public to know springs
from the theory of representative, democratic government. Mill (1991: 245) tells us:
There is no difficulty in showing that the ideally best form of government is that in which the
sovereignty, or supreme controlling power in the last resort, is vested in the entire aggregate of the
community; every citizen not only having a voice in the exercise of that ultimate sovereignty, but
being, at least occasionally, called on to take an actual part in the government, by the personal
discharge of some public function, local or general.
In his excellent essay supporting this view, Mill makes it clear that correct and
detailed information about how the country is run is an important prerequisite for
any person involved in taking political decisions and this must surely apply, even if
the decision taken is only how to vote every few years.
However, all too often the right to know is used as an excuse to publish
circulation-boosting journalism. Whether this is designed to appeal to readers’
prurient natures or pander to their prejudices does not seem to matter as long
as there is a profit to be made from increasing sales.
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10 1 • What are ethics?
Why do we need morality?
If we lived in a world that contained no other people would we need to be moral?

If no other entity existed and we were totally alone would our day-to-day existence
contain any need to modify our behaviour in order to do what was morally right?
How could we steal? There would be no one to murder or insult. The only person
offended by our violence, bad language and behaviour would be ourselves. Those
who believe in a deity would of course still say that morality was important, that
God had laid down moral rules which must still be followed. But even those who
do not believe in God would find it morally repugnant to do some things. Chopping
down all the trees in the world, even if no one else was there, would be an act that
many would consider to be immoral. Morality would still be an important consider-
ation in your life in such circumstances; it would just have very different rules.
Without anyone else, entirely marooned, there would be far fewer moral dilemmas
to solve. Moral dilemmas are the penalty of our involvement with society, the price
we pay for the benefits of living in close proximity with others. At one end of the
spectrum this involves adhering to the law, at the other being courteous and
respectful to others.
Many philosophers have wondered why we have morals and where they come
from. There seem to be three main theories. The first of these (and perhaps the
oldest) is religion. Most religions have a code of morality connected to them, usually
passed to the people from God through a prophet. These morals are usually
enforced by some notion of reward in the afterlife for adherence, or damnation for
continually breaking the code.
The second theory is that morals are a pact with society that allows us to gain
the benefits of living with others. These are taught to us by our parents and others
and are initially enforced by our parents and, later, more subtlely but just as
strongly, by society at large. Very few of us continue to do something that society
generally thinks is wrong and opposes. The final theory is that we are moral because
we are naturally attuned to doing the right thing – that somehow we instinctively
know what is right and wrong and that even if we were not taught how to behave,
we would still instinctively behave well. This seems unlikely. One only has to watch
young children for a short time to realise that their behaviour is entirely self-centred
and only becomes more moral over time as they are trained by their parents and
society.
Some elements of unacceptable social behaviour are damaging enough to a
society for the whole of that society to insist on their suppression. If, for example,
we were to allow murder or serious violence to be used as methods of solving dis-
putes, the benefits of society would soon cease for many people and day-to-day
living would become largely unbearable. ‘Might is right’ is fine when you are one of
the mighty, but none of us are mighty all of the time. It is in all our interests to
ensure that we all adhere to the rules and that those who don’t are punished.
Because of the potential for breakdown, many societies formalise the rules under
which that society exists. These become the laws of that particular society and allow
it to lay down penalties for transgressors. The death penalty is the most extreme
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Why do journalists need professional ethics? 11
penalty society can impose for serious crimes whereas prison is generally seen as a
milder form of punishment. The law is good at providing support for those moral
dilemmas with which we are all in agreement, but is far less good at dealing with
moral dilemmas about which there is considerable debate. Laws about drink
licensing, smoking and recreational drugs, for instance throw up considerable dif-
ferences of opinion within society. These are areas where someone’s personal
morality can conflict quite strongly with the law. One person might want to limit
the hours when drink can be sold, but be quite happy about legalising cannabis;
another might feel that it’s not the state’s business to decide when one can have an
alcoholic drink but feel that all other recreational drugs should be illegal. Laws
concern what we shouldn’t do (or very occasionally should do) whilst morality con-
cerns what we ought or ought not to do.
Laws normally apply to the whole of society but there some actions that can only
be perpetrated by certain people in certain positions. Some of these actions are so
important to society that they require legislation. For instance, corruption of offi-
cials only involves a few people in powerful positions but the corruption may affect
many other people. Consequently we enshrine such matters in our legal system.
Other issues, a doctor’s impropriety with a patient, for instance, may affect individ-
uals but do not directly damage society and consequently are not enshrined directly
in law. This is where professional ethics become important. A doctor who has an
affair with a patient may be deemed to have breached professional ethics; he or she
has not broken the law. A journalist is in the same position. For example, if he or
she takes advantage of a situation and does not deal fairly with those to whom he
or she owes loyalty (e.g. revealing a source who wishes to remain anonymous), then
it is unlikely that society will suffer directly but the individual might well suffer.
There are a wide range of issues in which journalists are involved that are not
subject to the law but must be considered from an ethical viewpoint.
Why do journalists need professional ethics?
The concept of an ethical journalist may seem to be a contradiction in terms. The

phrase ‘you shouldn’t believe all you read in the papers’ sums up the attitude of
many people. A reasonable definition of a good journalist is ‘someone who gathers,
in a morally justifiable way, topical, truthful, factually-based information of interest
to the reader or viewer and then publishes it in a timely and accurate manner to a
mass audience’. However, all too often journalism falls far short of this ideal. Nor
is this necessarily a description that would be used by all journalists to describe
excellence in the profession. Many colleagues would describe a good journalist as
having the professional virtues of ‘getting the story’ – the ability to find an inter-
esting story, research it and return it to the news centre by the deadline. How the
news was gathered and sourced, together with the degree of accuracy, would seem
to be secondary considerations in this definition of a ‘good journalist’. ‘Don’t let the
facts get in the way of a good story’ is an instruction that has been heard in more
than one newsroom.
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The suggestion that journalists are more concerned about the story than how
they get it, or whether it is truthful, highlights the pressures under which those in
the profession work. Commercial pressures to provide the most interesting stories
combine with tight deadlines to make journalists more single-minded than perhaps
they should be. Essentially this is an argument of functionality. Is a good journalist
one with high principles or one who brings his employer, within the deadline, stories
that will boost circulation? The reader may say the former even though they add
support to the latter every time they buy a newspaper or magazine. All too often a
journalist can forget his or her loyalties to the reader in the rush to show loyalty to
his or her employer.
But a good journalist surely needs to be both. In order to win the reader’s trust,
a journalist must show time after time that stories are accurate and truthful and this
will involve ensuring they are gathered fairly. Gathering stories without due regard
to professional morals and printing them without regard to truth might work well
for a short period, but since the purpose of journalism is to report the truth, the trust
a reader has for the journalist would soon evaporate and this means that the jour-
nalistic vehicle would become useless.
Many journalists believe that they should be trusted by their readers and that this
is the mark of good journalism. But the only way to ensure trust from anyone is to
never let them down. If you are always providing news consumers with stories that
have been gathered fairly and are presented to them accurately and honestly to
reveal as much truth as is possible, then readers will come to trust the journalist. No
other method will work as well or stand the test of time.
Classical theory
Our moral obligations can be explained by a number of different theories, some of

them overlapping and some completely at odds with one another. Some of these
theories can help journalists try to determine the morality of their professional
actions. I will consider a few of the more important theories and their implications
for journalism. There are many other leading philosophers whose work I have
ignored as being either derivative or less easy to apply directly to professional
morality.
Aristotle
Aristotle (d. 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher who believed that the function of
human beings was to pursue happiness or Eudaimonia. ‘Eudaimonia is often trans-
lated as happiness, but that can be misleading. It is sometimes translated as
flourishing. Which although slightly awkward, has more appropriate connotations’
(Warburton 1998: 18). To achieve happiness, Aristotle said, one should live moder-
ately. His theory is known as the ‘golden mean’. He argued that one should live
neither to excess nor to frugality but in moderation somewhere between the two.
Aristotle’s theory is extremely useful provided you can decide what is excess and
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Classical theory 13
what is frugality and where the mean lies. Bravery, he tells us, is a virtue that lies
somewhere between the extremes of cowardice and rashness. When Aristotle talks
about a mean, however, he is not talking about an average. To take the example of
drinking: it is not to say that at one extreme is drinking far too much alcohol or at
the other drinking none at all and that taking an average of say four units of alcohol
a night is the mean. Aristotle contended that the right mean may well vary from
person to person. So there are people who say it is wrong to drink alcohol but it is
also true that they could be seen as being too self-satisfied and sanctimonious to be
considered morally good. Nor are they acting in their own best interests as present
health research shows that a drink every now and again is good for you. Refusing
to drink a toast to peace or friendship in Western Europe because you do not believe
in drinking alcohol could be perceived as being mean-spirited. On the other hand,
few people would see drinking fifteen units of alcohol every night of the week as
acceptable. It is also bad for your health. Most would regard having a drink now
and again as the ‘golden mean’.
Aristotle also believed that one had to learn to be virtuous. Virtue was not some-
thing that was given to all automatically. It explained why children and animals had
not achieved Eudaimonia.
Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its
birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral
virtue comes about as the result of habit. . . . From this it is also plain that none of the moral
virtues arise in us by nature; for nothing that exists in nature can form a habit that is contrary to its
nature. For instance, the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move
upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times . . . (Aristotle 1980:
28)
A problem with Aristotle’s theory about the mean, however, is that there are some
virtues that seem to be absolutes. Truth, for instance, does not seem to be a virtue
to be delivered in moderation. Either one is truthful or one is not. It is in its failure
to address the issue of moral absolutes that Aristotle’s theory is seen to be deficient.
Religion
Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all
your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other
commandment greater than these.’ (Mark 12:29–31)
Religion is the basis of much moral teaching in the world. The West has been mainly
influenced by Judaeo-Christian ethics whereas much of the Arab and North African
world has seen Islam as a strong and uncompromising influence. In India, Hinduism
is a powerful religious and social system, which includes the use of the caste system
as the basis of society.
Whilst theoretically, religious moral teaching requires a belief in God to underpin
it, this seems in practice to be unimportant. In Britain, and indeed most Western
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countries, Christianity has become so entrenched within the culture that much
moral teaching and thought comes from it without being based on active belief. Our
fundamental structures of right and wrong, good and evil tend to be based on the
Bible’s teachings.
Whilst its use by Christians is understandable, many people in the West who
claim not to believe in God also use this ethical system to underpin their moral
values, if only because they have absorbed the established cultural moral underpin-
ning without much thought as to its origins. Christians accept the entire teaching.
However, those who do not believe in God seem to be able to accept the guidance
on living a good life without the religious belief and to use it as an ethical system.
The main criticism of religion as an ethical system is the need for faith. What if
God is not a loving and moral God? Using religion, we judge our moral code by our
own interpretation of God (be that personal or cultural) and what he expects of us
and not vice versa.
Ethical egoism
Aristotle’s view that people should behave so as to achieve happiness is challenged
by some philosophers as being fundamentally flawed. To do what is right because it
makes us happy is just self-interest, they claim. Supporting his maxim of a universal
law, Kant (1993: 15) says that: ‘To be truthful from duty is, however, quite different
from being truthful from fear of disadvantageous consequences; in the first case the
concept of the action itself contains a law for me, while in the second I must first
look around elsewhere to see what the results for me might be connected with the
action.’ Kant believed it is motive that is important. The consequences, whether that
be happiness or the absence of misery, are not significant in making an act a good
act.
Writing about the ideas of Plato, H.A. Prichard (1949: 110–11) goes further and
proposes that what Socrates must have meant in ‘introducing the subject of the Idea
of good’ was ‘that in all action what we are striving to bring into existence is – not
what is good but – what is really good for us, or for our own good’. He goes on to
say: ‘If we accept the idea we shall be involved in very awkward consequences. For
we shall then be forced to allow (1) that there is really no such thing as a conscien-
tious action or a benevolent or a malevolent action, and also (2) that there is really
no difference in the motive between the acts of a so-called good man and those of a
so-called bad man’ (ibid.: 112).
Prichard does not think Kant’s use of the categorical imperative gets us out of this
difficulty: ‘it should be noted that the summary attempt to elucidate the nature of
moral obligation by the analogy of law . . . is only mischievous, because it represents
our being morally bound to do some action as if it were our being commanded to
do it’ (ibid.: 95).
Ethical egoism suggests that all morality is in reality merely self-interest. If doing
my duty either brings good consequences or simply makes me feel happier because
I have done my duty, then surely my action is indistinguishable from self-interest?
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Classical theory 15
Utilitarianism
Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend
to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. (John Stuart Mill
1991: 137)
Utilitarianism is also widely accepted in the West as an ethical system. Jeremy

Bentham (1748–1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806–73) are usually credited as being
its most significant proponents. Utilitarianists believe that an action that produces
an excess of beneficial effects over harmful ones must be the right one. Certainly this
a system that has considerable appeal for journalists. It justifies, for example,
ruining the life of a children’s home superintendent by exposing him as a child
abuser on the basis that it has saved children of the future from a good deal of
misery.
One problem with utilitarianism is that it depends on who makes the decision.
For instance, one could justify the killing of a homeless down-and-out who has no
family in order that his organs could be donated to several desperately ill patients
on the basis that four people could live with consequent benefits to their families for
the loss of only one life. But this depends on each unit of happiness being the same,
something Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) condemned ruthlessly. He believed that
some people were more important than others. Writing about the English utilitar-
ians in less than complimentary terms, he said:
Not one of all these ponderous herd animals . . . wants to know or scent that the ‘general welfare’ is
not an ideal, or a goal, or a concept that can be grasped at all, but only an emetic – that what is
right for one cannot by any means therefore be right for another, that the demand for one morality
for all is detrimental to precisely the higher men, in short there exists an order of rank between
man and man, consequently also between morality and morality. (Nietzsche 1973: 139)
One can argue not only that one person is more important than another but also
that actions have different perceived values. For instance, money given to a beggar
has more significance when that money comes from a poor student than from a mil-
lionaire. Utilitarianism also does not require any measurement of the motive of the
action. Provided the consequence is an increase in the sum of happiness, an evil act
can be justified.
Kant: the categorical imperative

To be truthful from duty, however, is an entirely different thing from being truthful out of fear of
untoward consequences, for in the former case the concept of the action itself contains a law for
me, while in the latter I must first look about to see what results for me may be connected with it.
(Immanuel Kant 1990: 19)
The German Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is a highly significant figure in modern phil-
osophy. He helped to develop the concept of duty ethics. Kant believed that a moral
act was one that denied self and followed only obligation. If I have promised to meet
someone tonight then I am morally obliged to do that regardless of my inclinations. If,
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however, I have made no such promise, then I am free to follow my inclinations. But
whatever I do would be merely a matter of taste and not a moral act.
Kant went on to develop the theory of universalisability, often called the ‘cate-
gorical imperative’. This determines that: ‘[I] ought never to act in such a way that
I could not also will that my maxim should be a universal law’ (Kant 1990: 18).
Categorical imperatives are different from hypothetical imperatives. Hypothetical
imperatives are concerned only with prudential action, or those actions that it
would be sensible (but not necessarily moral) to take. If you were about to be run
over by a car, then a hypothetical imperative would be: ‘To avoid being run over,
run fast to your left.’ This would be a prudent action and has no moral component.
On the other hand, it is a duty to maintain one’s life and so there will be a categor-
ical imperative to that effect. Categorical imperatives enjoin action completely
without qualification; they deal solely in absolute duties.
Kant’s theory allows the development of a set of universal laws for journalists
with a matching set of licences that can be applied in many varied circumstances.
This is the basis for codes of conduct. Kant also believed that one would have to
examine the motives of a person to see whether their behaviour was good or bad.
Their intentions are more important than the act itself. If they acted solely from a
sense of duty and not out of self-interest, then their action could well be morally jus-
tifiable no matter what the consequences. If a journalist were to report something
that was not true, despite thorough checking (perhaps he or she had been lied to),
then the journalist could not be blamed for the consequences, even if these were
damaging. He or she would have been behaving morally in printing the truth as he
or she had determined it to be.
However, Kant’s formulation does not handle conflicts of interest well. For
example, if a journalist were asked by police to suppress the story of a kidnap in
order to protect the victim’s life, how could the journalist not publish when it
should be a categorical imperative to publish known information; yet to protect
someone’s life when such protection is required must surely also be a categorical
imperative? Since much of the ethical debate within the media is balancing the right
to publish against some other right, such as a person’s right to privacy, Kant is not
always that helpful.
Kant believed that every person had equal value and the same right to have their
view taken into consideration. He thought that the end did not justify the means.
Only by acting from duty could one be said to be acting morally, and the conse-
quence was not something that could always be foreseen. This makes his views
useful when drawing up codes of conduct.
Ross
The philosopher Sir William David Ross (1877–1971) took the view that we all
have duties of fidelity. In other words, we are bound by our own words or acts. If
we sign a contract, we are duty-bound not to break it. If we make a promise we are
bound to keep it. He also believed in the concept of reparation. If you do ‘wrong’
you are duty-bound to undo the wrong and make good the damage as far as poss-
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The language of morals 17
ible. This duty extends to gratitude. If someone performs a good act for you, you
are under an obligation to return the favour at some point. Ross believes that this
duty of gratitude can extend to friends, relatives, employers and employees.
Ross’s ideas have a direct application to journalism as it can be said that journal-
ists have a duty of gratitude to readers, advertisers, employers and so on. We will
use this view of duty a lot throughout this book, although I will refer to it more
often as a duty of loyalty as I think this better describes the relationship. I might be
grateful that you are reading this book, but I do not see that that entails me in any
duty. But my loyalty, induced by that duty of gratitude, will mean that I will
produce the most accurate, informative book that I can.
Ross also talks about other duties:
• Beneficence – our duty to improve the lot of others.
• Justice – we all have a duty to see that people get what they deserve, whether
this is pleasure or punishment.
• Self-improvement – we have a duty to try to improve our own condition of
virtue, intelligence or happiness.
• Non-injury – our duty not to hurt others or allow them to be hurt if we can
prevent it.
Ross chaired the first Royal Commission into the press in 1947.
The language of morals
The former [objectivists] lay stress on the fixed principles that are handed down by the father, the
latter [subjectivists] on the new decisions which have to be made by the son. (R.M. Hare, 1995: 77)
Much of the ethical debate over the last century has revolved around the analysis of the
language of morals and what the words ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘ought’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’ and so on
mean. A number of theories have been developed by philosophers such as G. E. Moore,
A. J. Ayers and R. M. Hare which attempt to shed some light in the area of value words
and our use of them. Most of these theories are essentially theories about theories and
as such require much supportive argument. However, Table 1.1 summarises the main
ideas. To put some of the theories in Table 1.1 into context, let us look at a dilemma and
how the various theories would address it. I promise a friend that I will meet her in town
at six o’clock. Is it acceptable to break my promise in order to rescue someone from a
burning building, thus making me late for my appointment? A motivist might say ‘yes’
as my motive for breaking my promise would be to save a life or ‘no’ if my duty was to
keep my promise. Consequentialists believe that only the consequence of the act is sig-
nificant. Therefore, a consequentialist might say ‘no’ as the consequence of braving the
flames would be to break my promise or ‘yes’ as the consequence is to save a life. A deon-
tologist believes that the act of promising to do something performs an act which by its
very nature obliges one to carry it out regardless of the consequences. I have promised
to meet my friend at six o’clock; if I do not do so I am breaking my promise (no matter
what the excuse) and that is not acceptable. From this viewpoint a journalist would
JOUR_C01.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 18
automatically be acting immorally if he or she did not gather truthful information and
disseminate it to the public because by the nature of the act, that is what journalists
should be obliged to do. Clearly deontologists need to be careful with their promises!
Table 1.1 The language of morals
Naturalism If a moral judgement can be reduced to some other branch of science,

then ethics must be naturalistic. In other words, if I do something
‘good’ in order to please someone else, then that is a matter of
psychology rather than ethics.
Non-naturalism If ethics is a true branch of science by itself with its own laws, if the
world contains moral elements in the same way it has physical
elements, then ethics must be non-natural. Followers of religion see
morality in this way: morals are not a branch of science, but the divine
will of God. These people are non-naturalists.
Emotivism Emotivists claim that all ethics are about how people feel, not in the
sense of feeling right or wrong, or indeed any real evaluative phrase at
all. Emotivists believe it is impossible to verify moral judgements
scientifically.
Subjectivism A subjective theory of morals is one in which ethical judgements are
neither true nor false or if those judgements are true or false they are
always individualistically applicable to the psychology of the person
who utters them. If I believe that it is wrong to steal, but you believe it
is all right, then we are both right although I may well disapprove of
your actions. All we can argue about is how we feel about the act, not
the moral questions of the act itself. Your right to believe your beliefs
would be as valid as mine because there are no provable precepts, only
individual psychology. This takes on an important role when comparing
international sets of ethics, particularly in journalism.
Objectivism An objective theory is one that is not subjectivistic. It allows holders to
say that there can be a set of guiding principles which will hold true for
all, and we can then debate the rights and wrongs of an issue and not
just how we feel about it.
Motivism Motivists believe that only the motive for an action needs to be
considered when looking at whether it was a moral act. Even if the act
leads to disastrous consequences, if the motive was pure, then the
action was a moral one. Kant believed that it was immoral to tell a lie to
hide a friend from a mad axe-murderer even if the consequence was
that the friend was later found and killed.
Consequentialism Consequentialists are little concerned about motivation. Provided the
act has good consequences, it is moral. The end justifies the means.
Deontologism Deontologists believe that the very words themselves carry an
obligation. They believe that neither the motive nor the consequences
are of significance, only the nature of the act itself. If you promise to do
something, then the obligation contained in the word ‘promise’ leads to
a duty to fulfil the act no matter what the circumstances. This has
particular reference when we look at the punishment of crime. Do we
punish the motive, the consequence or the act? We punish the act, but
use the motive and consequence as mitigating factors. It is against the
law to steal, but stealing a few items of food from a major supermarket
to feed one’s hungry children would not be punished as severely a
stealing thousands of pounds from gullible investors (one would hope!).
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What is a right? Why do people have them? 19
What is a right? Why do people have them?
The importance of laws and ethical matters to society has already been discussed
but another issue that is often talked about is that of rights. ‘I know my rights’, we
say. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights was written following the
horrors of the Second World War and was closely followed by the European
Convention on Human Rights. The UK government included these rights into UK
law with the Human Rights Act 1998.
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary describes rights as ‘being entitled to
privilege or immunity, thing one is entitled to’ (1964: 1075). However, rights are
not things we have automatically and in many areas of the world breaches of human
rights are commonplace. Human rights in this country are ours by agreement – a
pact we have with the authorities of the country in which we live. In many countries
that right is underscored by a constitution or a ‘bill of rights’ which lays down the
rights or special privileges citizens can claim whilst listing the responsibilities that
follow from them. By living in a democracy, however structured, a complex struc-
ture of rights and obligations is built up. For instance, we have a right to be
considered innocent until proven guilty, if we should happen to face accusations in
a court of law, because the law grants us that right. In exchange, we are obliged to
live in peaceful coexistence with our neighbours under the law. If our neighbour
annoys us, we don’t punch him on the nose, we take him to court. There are a
number of other rights that we have which all have consequent duties that we are
obliged to fulfil to ensure that others have their rights.
The idea of human rights grew up with the theories of democratic government in
the seventeenth century. Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), a British philosopher,
believed that the only form of rule must be authoritarian as he believed this was the
only way to have firm control and peace. Life in ‘the state of nature’, according to
Hobbes, ‘is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. The way to improve matters
was for people to stick to the rules, to abide by ‘covenants of mutual trust’. But, said
Hobbes, these covenants must be enforced by an absolute power as only ‘the terror
of some punishment’ would keep men to the covenants. Hobbes argued that this
power should be a single person, probably the king, as then his self-interest would
be directly tied to the country, as a single person would not have internal conflicts,
compromise secrecy or change decisions depending on who turned up to debate and
vote.
Those who opposed these views pointed out that once one has an absolute
power, then there is no turning back to having control over the covenants. Having
given absolute power to someone, they then have absolute power to ensure one
can’t change one’s mind. There are plenty of examples of such absolute powers
around the world and changing them proves to be extremely difficult. An absolute
power almost always ends any dissent.
John Locke (1632–1704) argued differently. For Locke, the state of nature is one
in which a man who is wronged by another has the right to punish him. However,
since Locke accepted that there are several reasons why this may not work, he
believed men should come together and give up their right to escape punishment by
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authorising society to punish them, and therefore gain the right to have those who
transgress against them punished. By giving up our right to escape punishment, we
give up our right to escape punishment when we might be strong enough to enforce
it to ensure that others are punished at times when we might be too weak to enforce
it. Locke pointed out that for this to work there must be law above all and that
tyranny – absolute power – of any sort must therefore be wrong. Locke said that the
only sensible way to live was to give up the right to escape punishment and deter-
mine the law in return for appointing people who determined the law and ensured
that those who broke it were punished. As part of this compact, the people gain
rights. These are not privileges, granted to them by the government, because this
would imply that these rights could be taken away for misbehaviour or simply at
the whim of the government. This would make a mockery of such rights as the right
to a fair trial or to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Our pact was solely to
give up our ability to escape punishment in favour of the opportunity to appoint the
lawmakers.
John Stuart Mill (1806–73) supported this view saying that there was no diffi-
culty showing that the best form of government is one that is ‘vested in the entire
aggregate of the community; every citizen having not just a voice . . . but being called
upon to take an actual part in the government, by the personal discharge of some
public function local or general’ (Mill, On Liberty and Other Essays).
Following from this, the people who are appointed to make and uphold the law
should be responsible to those who appoint them. It is at this stage that the media
becomes important as it has a significant role to play in ensuring that those
appointed to draw up the law answer to those who appoint them. In a Hobbesian
media there is no need to challenge and test government. It could not inform voters
as there would be no voters. There would be little point in criticising or challenging
a leadership that had absolute power, first because that power would be certain to
crush this act of dissent and secondly because there would simply be no purpose in
it. Much better to pretend that things were fine and only talk about the good in life
rather than point out that there were lots of things wrong about which you could
do nothing. There would almost certainly be a media of entertainment and a news
service providing information and limited education. But it would not be attempting
to mediate between government and governed. It would be tightly controlled by the
absolute power and so whilst it would need to have some thought about pro-
fessional practice, many of the ethical issues required of a media operating in a
Western-style democracy would not be required.
Locke’s description of the inalienability of human rights has permeated much of
the radical political thinking of the past three hundred years. Much of the US con-
stitution can be identified as coming directly from Locke, while much of Western
political democracy is based on his theories. The human rights that are now thought
to exist are fairly extensive, but the ones that apply mainly to our consideration of
journalism include the right to:
• Freedom of speech;
• Freedom of conscience and opinion;
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• A fair trial;
• Be presumed innocent until proven guilty;
• Be free from discrimination;
• Respect for private and family life; and
• The right to free elections.
Human rights are often enshrined in law. Human rights in the UK are ours by
virtue of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention of Human
Rights. In many countries human rights are upheld by a constitution or a ‘bill of
rights’ which lays down the rights its citizens have. The statutes go on to lay down
the law to which the citizens must adhere; to which they have agreed to give up their
chance to avoid punishment as part of their agreement to be citizens of that country
with the rights that go with citizenship. By living in a democracy, however organ-
ised, a complex structure of rights and obligations is built up. For instance, we have
a right to be considered innocent until proven guilty if we should happen to face
accusations in a court of law. In exchange, we live in peaceful coexistence with our
neighbours under the law and accept that if we don’t, we will be obliged to face that
court and explain ourselves and accept the court’s judgment.
Further reading and support material
There are a number of books examining the different approaches that can be taken to ethics and
moral reasoning. Harman Gilbert (1977) The Nature of Morality: An Introduction to Ethics
(Oxford University Press, Oxford) is a useful introduction to some of the ideas outlined above
and this can be augmented by P. Singer (1994) Ethics (Oxford University Press, Oxford). There
are numerous books examining the arguments of Kant, Aristotle, Bentham and Mill and others
and these can be found in any reasonable bookshop or library.
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Chapter 2
N EWS : TOWAR D S A D E F I N ITI O N
• What makes a news story

• Why it is important to understand news in order to grasp journalism ethics
• How news, as demanded by today’s audiences, poses particular ethical
dilemmas
Newspapers are full of information: reviews, listings, features, profiles, forthcoming
events, sports, advertisements and news. Readers expect this information to follow
ethical norms and yet sometimes it doesn’t. Why is this?
In order to understand some of the temptations that lead journalists, on occasion,
to behave unethically and particularly to distort and twist the truth we need to
know what it is that makes something newsworthy and therefore attracts the jour-
nalist’s attention in the first place. What is it about a newsworthy event that makes
it stand out from all the other elements of information that someone, somewhere,
would like a journalist to use in his or her newspapers or news bulletins? Until we
know what a newsworthy event is, it is very difficult to understand the problems,
both practical and ethical, facing the journalist who wishes to report newsworthy
events.
Practical problems
There is a difference between a newsworthy event and news. A newsworthy event

will not necessarily become news, just as news is often about an event that is not, in
itself, newsworthy. We can define news as an event that is recorded in a newspaper
or a broadcast news bulletin, regardless of whether it is about a newsworthy event.
The very fact of its transmission means that it is news, even if we struggle to under-
stand why it has been used. However, not all newsworthy events make it on to the
news. All journalists are familiar with the scenario where they are approached by
someone with the words ‘I’ve got a great story for you’. For them, it is a major news
event, but for the journalist it might be something else.
One of the problems with evaluating news decision-making is that news is analog
rather than digital. We cannot say ‘this is news and this is not’ for each event we
come across, as a particular event’s newsworthiness varies depending on the circum-
stances surrounding it and the target audience group. For instance, to find a bag
abandoned in a hotel lobby is probably not newsworthy – it might be surrounded
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Practical problems 23
by others with its owner trying to check out at the reception desk – but to find a bag
abandoned in a quiet corner of a railway station might well demand more urgent
action and become a news story. Whether an event is used as news may also depend
on other criteria, such as the space available in a paper or bulletin or the number of
other good stories about. There are many factors that influence the choice of good
news stories. Threshold criteria must exist to separate events that make it into news-
papers or broadcasts from those that do not. Some of the threshold criteria for news
are the circumstances surrounding the medium (see Exhibit 2.1).
Exhibit 2.1 Threshold criteria for news

Space: A newspaper with only a few pages will have a higher threshold than one with
a lot of space to fill. The less space available, the more newsworthy the event must be
to make it into the newspaper. Broadcasting regularly has a higher threshold than news-
papers because it has less space.
Logistics: Several observers have identified the physical difficulties of putting a news
report together as an important criterion in its selection. Paul Rock explains in a
chapter called ‘News as Eternal Recurrence’ that
in place of the random search [for news], news gathering takes routine forms. . . .
Journalists position themselves so that they have access to institutions which gen-
erate a useful volume of reportable activity at useful intervals. Some of these
institutions do of course make themselves visible by means of dramatisation, or
through press releases and press agents. Others are known regularly to produce con-
sequential events. The courts, sports grounds and parliament mechanically
manufacture news which is effortlessly assimilated by the press. (in Cohen and
Young 1973: 64)
News is more likely to be reported from places where reporters are already working. An
editor cannot afford to have reporters sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for
unpredictable events. It is more likely, therefore, that a report from a criminal court will
be used than a newsworthy event from a source that cannot be predicted, even if the
unpredictable event is more newsworthy as measured by other objective criteria.
Time: Time plays an important part in any news-gathering operation both in terms of
getting the story and in terms of when the event became newsworthy. An event must
be topical within the period of publication. No newspaper wants to carry a story that
has happened earlier than the publication of the previous edition. A radio or TV bul-
letin prefers to update the news given on the last bulletin.
Philip Schlesinger, in Putting Reality Together: BBC News (1978), supports the above
ideas by identifying time constraints and logistics as reasons why journalists alter the
threshold requirement for a newsworthy event to become news.
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24 2 • News: towards a definition
What do other people think is news?
We have identified some of the criteria that affect the choice of news stories and
these were mainly to do with the medium that the stories are to appear in. However,
there are other factors that distinguish the events that become news from those that
do not.
One of the first groups in the UK to define ‘news’ was the Royal Commission on
the Press of 1947–49 (the Ross Commission). It said:
There are, however, certain elements common to all conceptions of news. To be news an event
must first be interesting to the public, and the public for this purpose means for each paper the
people who read that paper, and others like them. Second, and equally important, it must be new,
and newness is measured in newspaper offices in terms of minutes. (1949: 103)
The Commission went on to list items of interest identified in a questionnaire as

follows: sport; news about people; news about strange or amusing adventures;
tragedies; accidents; crimes; ‘news whose sentiment or excitement brings some
colour into life’ (1949: 104). In the 1960s, Alastair Hetherington, editor of The
Guardian newspaper, drew up a list of news priorities for new staff, which con-
tained the seven factors outlined in Exhibit 2.2. Although Hetherington’s list is of
some use for media decision-making, it is not as helpful as it could be for under-
standing news. It is merely the distillation of his considerable experience and
professional skill.
Exhibit 2.2 Alastair Hetherington’s news priorities

• Significance: social, economic, political
• Drama: excitement, entertainment
• Surprise: unpredictability, newness
• Personalities: royalty, showbusiness
• Sex: scandal, crime
• Numbers: scale of the event
• Proximity: the geographical closeness of the event
There are many other ideas about what news is: ‘When a dog bites a man, that
is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news’ (John
B. Bogart, City editor, New York Sun, 1873–90); ‘News is People’; ‘News is what
they talk about down at the local pub’; ‘News is something someone wants to keep
secret’. While all descriptions like these have an element of truth and wit, they are
not much help in sorting news from the rest of information. After all, what if, for
instance, the dog carries a strange new disease that is transmittable to man by biting
and has only been recognised by medical science that week? The unusual element in
the story means this certainly would be news.
So what about academics? Have they done any better? Johan Galtung and Mari
Ruge were amongst the first academics to try to explain news. Their work is sub-
stantial and influential. It underpins the thinking of John Hartley in Understanding
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News (1982) and is used by John Venables in What is News? (1993) and was revis-
ited as a major theory of news by Harcup and O’Neill (2001).
Galtung and Ruge originally published their research in the Journal of
International Peace Research in 1965. It was a study of the presentation of the
Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four foreign newspapers, looking at the structure
of foreign news. An extract entitled ‘Structuring and Selecting News’ was published
in The Manufacture of News: Deviance, Social Problems and the Mass Media,
edited by Stanley Cohen and Jock Young (1973). Galtung and Ruge saw news
broken down into two categories: general news value and news values of particular
importance to Western media (see Exhibit 2.3).
Harcup and O’Neill draw on these last two lists to develop a more up-to-date
version of their own that suggests that potential items must fall into one or more of
the following categories:
The power elite: stories concerning powerful individuals or organizations;
Celebrity: stories concerning those already famous;
Entertainment: stories concerning sex and show business;
Surprise: stories containing an element of surprise;
Bad news: conflict or tragedy;
Good news: stories with positive overtones;
Magnitude: stories perceived as sufficiently significant;
Relevance: stories perceived to be relevant to the audience;
Follow-ups: stories about matters already in the news;
Media agenda: stories that fit the news organization’s own agenda.
(Harcup and O’Neill 2001: 279)
Useful though these lists are, they are all attempts to identify news from experi-
ence, or observation of what actually ends up in a newspaper or news broadcast.
They identify a series of criteria that help explain why those stories became news,
that is why they were in the newspaper or broadcast, but they do not explain why
they were chosen in the first place by the news selectors out of the thousands of
events that also fulfill the criteria but were ignored, nor do they fully explain why
readers buy the eventual product. Galtung and Ruge’s list is used extensively in
recent textbooks to explain why events are newsworthy, but news values have
changed enormously over the past forty years. Even a cursory examination of a
newspaper of the 1960s and a modern newspaper shows that now there is far less
international news, far fewer stories about politics, less industrial news and more
gossip, more sport and more entertainment and celebrity news. This change is not
well explained by Galtung and Ruge or Harcup and O’Neill. Nor are we able to tell
from Galtung and Ruge’s analysis which stories were chosen by the news editors of
their samples and which news was ignored. We are unable to compare other events
that happened at that time but did not make the newspapers, not for reasons that
were in Galtung and Ruge’s list but by reason of other criteria which we may not
know.
More helpful in our development of an analysis of why events become news is
identified by John Venables. He comes to the conclusion that ‘change’ and ‘security
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Exhibit 2.3 Galtung and Ruge’s news criteria

The list of general news values relies on logical categorisation:
Frequency. The timespan of an event affects how it is used. If an event takes much
longer to unfold than can be handled by the publication frequency of the media con-
cerned, then it is ‘marked’ by the issuing of reports or sub-events.
Threshold. The size of a story. John Hartley explains this: ‘There is a threshold below
which an event will not be reported at all (the threshold intensity varies in intensity
between, for instance, local and national news)’ (1982: 76).
Unambiguity. Clear-cut events that require little explanation are more likely to be
used as news.
Meaningfulness. An event which coincides with the cultural assumptions of the jour-
nalist or the target audience is more likely to be used. (There is a tie-in with
unambiguity here – a meaningful event is less likely to be ambiguous.) This is a similar
criterion to Hetherington’s significance (Exhibit 2.2).
Consonance. Something that accords with the media’s preconceptions is more likely
to be reported. It also works the other way around: an event is more likely to be
reported in accordance with the preconceptions of the reporter.
Unexpectedness. Also appears on Hetherington’s list as surprise (Exhibit 2.2).
Continuity. If an event is already making news, then it is likely it will continue to make
the news.
Composition. An event might make the news even though it is not in itself that news-
worthy, merely to balance the media presentation. In other words, a weak foreign story
might be added to a radio bulletin merely to balance the home-and-away elements of
the bulletin.
There are a further four news values of particular importance to Western media:
Elite nations. They believe there is a bias in Western media towards reporting events
in the first world. This is also hinted at by Hetherington in proximity (Exhibit 2.2), but
is not quite the same thing.
Elite persons. The activities of those perceived as important are of more interest than
the activities of people considered less socially significant. Hetherington talks about
personalities (Exhibit 2.2).
Personalisation. Events being presented as the actions of a particular person, e.g.
‘Blair backs Clinton on Gulf ’, to invent an example.
Negativity. The view that bad news is ‘good’ news. Only news that is negative is used
in the media. A complaint supported by Martyn Lewis, the television news reader, who
campaigned for a good news channel.
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concerns’ are ‘the fundamental factors which motivate attentiveness in an audience’

(1993: 34). Although some changes are good, they all have threatening implications.
Learning to deal with change requires intelligence and planning. He goes on to
describe the importance of change: ‘Without change, information cannot be inter-
preted as news. Change is important because it involves uncertainty, which in turn
generates attention and concern’ (ibid.).
All the observers, academics and practitioners discussed (except Venables) cate-
gorise what is news but there is little consideration of what we mean by
newsworthiness. There are many journalists who have developed their sense of what
is newsworthy, their ‘nose for news’, by copying the reactions of more experienced
colleagues. We can hardly be surprised if a new reporter decides that something is
newsworthy if it makes the news editor happy or excited. Unfortunately this empir-
ical approach has the same drawbacks as all observational views on news-gathering.
Observation alone is never enough by itself to deal with new circumstances. What
happens when a new news editor takes over in the office and seems to work by dif-
ferent criteria? Are there really different criteria or has the inexperienced journalist
merely misunderstood them? Students on journalism courses often find it frustrating
when one tutor seems to advise leading with this angle whilst the next tutor appears
to favour that angle. In fact, when the two tutors talk, their apparent differences
quickly disappear and an agreed angle normally appears. Journalists need to test
their hypotheses about news criteria under a number of different circumstances if
they are to become more efficient at news selection.
The Royal Commission used the word ‘new’ to indicate that the news item is
recent. Since this can easily be confused with the word ‘news’, I will use ‘topical’ to
indicate newness in the rest of this chapter. But remember, newness to a monthly
magazine will not be the same as newness to a daily newspaper, which will have a
different view of newness from that of a radio bulletin with an hourly schedule.
Some events continue over a long period and so remain topical. Wars, for instance,
remain topical despite their extended life-cycle. All events are sub-sets of other
events. The Second World War was a sub-set in the flow of European political
history. The retreat of the British Army from Dunkirk was a sub-set of the Second
World War. We could no doubt find sub-sets of Dunkirk. Each of these would be
handled in different ways by publications with different publication frequencies. A
magazine that only publishes every ten years, assuming there were such a thing,
would lead its 1940s edition with a story about the Second World War headlined:
‘European clash leads to global war: Allies triumph.’ Weekly papers of the period
looked at the retreat from Dunkirk in its totality, whilst radio bulletins and daily
papers of the time broke that episode into sub-sets.
Almost everyone, academic and practitioner alike, agrees that there has to be a
new or topical element for an item of information to be news. There is also wide-
spread agreement that news needs to interest the public. In modern terminology, the
general public is generally known as the target group and what the Ross
Commission called ‘the people who read that paper and others like them’ would
now be described as the target readership. This is a sub-section of the general popu-
lation that can be clearly identified, whether they actually read that publication or
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not. The Daily Mail, which has a clear view of its target readership, aims at women,
aged 25–50, who are, or aspire to be, middle to upper middle class with a tra-
ditional view about life and therefore a propensity to see their purpose as family
carers, even if this is manifested in a career which will provide financial security for
the family. The difficulties arrive when we start to consider precisely what it is that
is of interest to the target group. We can easily draw up a list of items that interest
different target groups: sex, war, crime, health and so on, but this is still based on
observation. We need to move beyond pure observation and start to look at what
makes for newsworthiness – or, what might be a better description in the context in
which we are working – what attracts readers.
For this is one of the main difficulties. Academics and serious commentators
regularly express their concern about the dumbing-down of news, and newspapers
in particular. They are concerned that newspapers should be the serious-minded
imparters of information to the general public in the constant political debate that
is central to democracy. Unfortunately, the average reader is less interested in such
issues unless they can be persuaded by the newspaper that this has a direct effect on
their lives. What does have a direct effect are stories that are about security change
that directly impinge on them and those they care about, and those that directly or
indirectly effect how they live their lives. When it comes to this second category, I
believe that gossip and its impact on readers is often underplayed by commentators,
many of whom attempt to limit news to its public sphere context where its purpose
is to develop debate and aid decision-making in the public forum In fact, most
readers want to apply intelligence they can gather directly to their own lives and this
means being concerned about issues that directly affect their decision-making and
their moral approach to living. This means that gossip plays a much stronger part
in the ordinary person’s life than many commentators would like, and that news is
focused on making issues easy to understand (even if they’re not).
Consequently stories about moral behaviour, whether of ordinary people or
celebrities, are important to readers, together with stories about tax, costs, mort-
gages and anything that potentially affects their earning and spending power (such
as redundancy, immigration, work changes, cheap imports, energy costs and trans-
port). Some papers carry this to extremes with the Daily Express, for instance,
formulaically running front-page stories about tax, mortgages, house prices, immi-
gration, crime or pensions, unless there is another story that absolutely has to claim
the front page.
The reason for this is clear – newspapers are there to make money and they must
keep their sales figures up if they are to keep their ad revenues high. The same is true
of commercial television. Although it has a public service obligation to provide news
and current affairs, commercial providers will always have one eye on the viewing
figures.
People are interested in gossip, particularly celebrity gossip, and many anthropol-
ogists and psychologists say that gossip is important to a society and that its role is
often underplayed (see Gluckman, Spacks, Hermes, Allport and Postman and
Dunbar). So while gossip in newspapers is widely condemned either as intrusive or
as evidence of ‘dumbing down’, in fact it may well play an important role in deter-
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mining society’s norms. In a society where direct person-to-person contact is now

less important than the mediated contact of TV and newspapers, it should be no sur-
prise that the peer and hierarchical concerns about our colleagues and neighbours
have been replaced by celebrities so that our gossip is no longer about our neigh-
bours and our ‘betters’ but about those we see regularly on TV and in the
newspapers, whether celebrities or fictional characters.
Talking about one’s friends, neighbours and relations is probably as old as lan-
guage, but Tebbutt, and Rosnow and Fine identify the term ‘gossip’ as being derived
from the old English term godsibb meaning ‘god-parent’ (Rosnow and Fine 1976:
86, Tebbutt 1995: 19). This term became extended over the years to mean female
friends of the mother who would gather at the birth and chattered idly amongst
themselves.
Joke Hermes believes that gossip has gathered a bad reputation over the years, to
the point where most people consider it either trivial or malicous:
It is considered a typical women’s pastime and is often taken to be highly malicious talk about
persons who are not present. Academic sources underline that gossip creates in-groups and out-
groups and that it is a social menace . . . (Hermes 1995: 119)
Hermes believes there are three varieties of gossip published in magazines: malicious
gossip and scandal, friendly stories about celebrities and friendly stories about
royalty (1995: 118). Much of the gossip in newspapers follows a similar pattern.
Rosnow and Fine (1976) offer several definitions for the meaning of gossip:
The unabridged Random House dictionary gives rumor as a synonym for gossip, which it defines as
‘idle talk’. Niehoff, however, has suggested drawing a distinction between ‘positive gossip’ and
‘negative gossip,’ and preserving rumor as a synonym for the latter expression. Cooley writes that
rumor deals with events and gossip deals with people, but Thomas and Znaniecki have qualified
this distinction slightly in arguing that rumor deals only with important events and gossip deals
with trivial personal occurrences. (Rosnow and Fine 1976: 83)
There seem to be two main themes to gossip: first that it can be positive or nega-
tive and secondly, that it is almost always trivial and without consequence, unless it
is malicious. Rosnow and Fine certainly identify positive and negative gossip but
emphasise that this is not really essential to its definition (1976: 87). They define
gossip as
news about the affairs of another, to one’s own memoirs or confessions, or to any hearsay of a
personal nature, be it positive or negative, spoken or in print. In that shadowy area between gossip
and rumor, where the significance of the message is unclear or debatable, either term will suffice.
The question now posed is how something characterized as trivial can be of value as a social
resource. (Rosnow and Fine 1976: 87)
There are two further elements to gossip identified by Spacks. One is the char-
acter of the exchange of information: Spacks believes that no more than two or
three can ‘engage in what I call a serious gossip’ (1986: 4) and she believes that the
level of gossip deteriorates as the group expands. It is certainly axiomatic that only
a limited number of people can gossip, and close observation of groups in social
JOUR_C02.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 30
settings such as pubs will show that a group of six or more friends will usually split
into sub-groups of three or four in order to talk, although these sub-groups may
change membership regularly over a period.
The second element is that the gossip always ‘involves talk about one or more
absent figures’ (ibid.). One might question a friend or exchange confidences, but dis-
cussion about an absent subject is gossip.
Hermes identifies gossip, certainly when it comes to reading gossip magazines, as
a pleasurable pursuit:
Some of the women’s magazine readers . . . do occasionally read gossip magazines . . . and enjoy
their unpretentious, undemanding stories. Others are fascinated, but express puzzlement at their
fascination or defend their taste for this low-level genre by making it clear they are aware of this
low status and that they are not taken in by the magazines and what they write. (Hermes 1995:
122)
Rosnow and Fine also point out that gossip is not always seen as being entirely
bad. They give an example from Lumley in which in 1888 ‘The girls of North Hall,
Newnham, debated the question whether life without gossip would be worth living’.
They came to the conclusion it would not and the principal defended this decision
(1976: 86).
Many anthropologists now see gossip as playing an important part in a number
of social and community roles. Dunbar believes that primates use their social intel-
ligence to form complex alliances with each other. He has found considerable
evidence to suggest that the normal size for a human social grouping is between 100
and 200, with a natural grouping being in the 120 to 150 range (1992: 30). He
believes that a group that size could only be maintained if humans had moved away
from more typical primate group activities such as grooming which limits interac-
tion to two, to language in which a 1 : 2.7 ratio could be achieved: one talker and
2.7 listeners – well within Meyer’s ‘good gossip’ limits, suggesting as it does an
average group of between three and four. Dunbar takes this a stage further and sug-
gests that the way men and women use gossip could suggest that
language evolved in the context of social bonding between females . . . The suggestion that
female–female bonding, based on knowledge of the relationships of other individuals, was more
important fits much better with views about the structure of nonhuman primate societies where
relationships between females are all important. That conversations allow us to exchange
information about people who are not present is vitally important. It allows us to teach others how
to relate to individuals they have never seen before. Combined with the fact that language also
makes it easy to categorise people into types, we can learn how to relate to classes of individuals
rather than being restricted to single individuals as primates are in grooming. (Dunbar 1992: 31)
So gossip can help us to place people into types and groups making it easier to
understand them and to deal with them on a day-to-day basis. Gossip can help
prevent us making damaging mistakes and speeds up the development of relation-
ships.
Gluckman (1963: 312) supports this with a case study that shows how insiders
use gossip to ensure their position within the community by using the lack of knowl-
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edge of outsiders against them. Tebbutt also explains how women’s gossip was used
to hold together communities at the turn of the nineteenth century (1995).
Tebbut, Hermes and Rosnow and Fine identify gossiping as being something
that is often seen as a women’s pastime. Where men are involved in gossip (and
Rosnow and Fine point out that ‘one need not search very far to find gossipy men’
(1976: 83)), the description is different. Men are usually described as being
involved in ‘shop talk’ or ‘shooting the breeze’ (Rosnow and Fine 1976: 82), the
implication of this being that men’s gossip is of more worth than that of women.
Tebbut also identifies this trend and points out that women tend to be patronised,
where their voices are documented at all, as ‘a second class version of “real” lan-
guage’ (1995: 1). She agrees that where men’s talk ‘performs the same function as
women’s gossip it is simply called something else’ (ibid.). This may help explain
why gossip is not seen as being important despite much research which shows that
gossip, whether direct or mediated in the newspapers, is important. Where gossip
becomes important in everybody’s opinion, it is simply called something else: net-
working, personnel intelligence, politics or background information. Professionals
attend conferences and meetings as much for gossip about peers as for the subject
matter of the conference.
Several authors identify (if only in passing) the aspirational nature of gossip. The
ability of gossip to define clear groups of people, insiders and outsiders – what Paine
calls ‘we groups’ (1967: 278) – has been identified by several writers (Tebbutt,
Rosnow and Fine, Gluckman, Shibutani, etc.). Gluckman expands on this theme by
pointing out that the more exclusive the group, the greater the amount of gossip
(1963: 309). He gives, as an example, groups whose social status becomes so exclu-
sive that they tend to become hereditary and then it also becomes necessary to
gossip not only about present members of the group but also the dead members.
These high-status groups, whether hereditary or professional are adept at excluding
parvenus by using gossip:
old practitioners of a subject can so easily put a comparative newcomer into his place, can make
him feel a neophyte. They have only to hint in a technical argument at some personal fact about the
person who advanced the theory discussed, to make the eager young student feel how callow he is.
(Ibid.)
This ability to retain exclusivity amongst a high-status group by using gossip to

exclude is often reversed by gossip magazines and newspapers so that they could be
seen as providing this exclusive gossip to low-status ‘wannabes’ who would then
feel they were ‘in the know’ and could take their ‘rightful’ place as part of the high-
status group.
Because gossip is important to media consumers and because we seem to be end-
lessly fascinated by celebrities, it is not surprising to find that newspapers use
substantial amounts of gossip.
A survey of one day’s newspapers chosen at random found that gossip was present
in all the newspapers. There were differences: the tabloids concentrated on popular
celebrities such as David Beckham, while the quality papers carried such stories with
a much narrower gossip context such as the story about two directors of New Look
JOUR_C02.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 32
(a fashion chain) announcing they were having an affair. However, both stories were
gossip.
Not surprisingly, many of the same stories appeared in all the newspapers. There
was one particular story in The Sun that set it apart from the other papers. All of
the first three pages contained a picture story about the visit to Disneyland of David
Beckham, wife Victoria Beckham and their son Brooklyn. Despite this major spread
of gossip, The Sun was still matched by the Star for the quantity of gossip. One of
the main stories of the day in all the newspapers was the progress of a young girl
(Sally Slater) who had had a heart transplant. A popular gossip story for the broad-
sheets was the opening of the Tate Modern gallery. This did not appear in the
tabloids apart from a short piece in the Daily Mail. The gossip in the tabloids was
almost always about celebrities such as: Les Dennis, the Beckhams, Eva Hertzigova,
Elle McPherson, Sir Elton John, Mike Tyson and stars from the Coronation Street
TV soap. A story about a maths teacher who had apparently absconded with a
female pupil was also widely used.
There are three clear categories of newspapers when it comes to the percentage
of news within the space available. The Sun, the Mirror and the Star carry the least
(31–35 per cent), The Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express carry
46–53 per cent while the rest all carry 81–83 per cent news.
The surprise here is the relatively low count for the Daily Telegraph. Despite its
broadsheet tradition, its news count is only on a par with the mid-market tabloids.
The measure for gossip breaks into groups. The first, the low circulation broad-
sheets (The Guardian and The Independent), have relatively low amounts of gossip.
The Daily Telegraph once again joins the mid-market Daily Express, this time with
The Times for the second group of papers that have between 15 and 17.1 per cent
gossip. The third group is the Mirror and the Daily Mail with 25.8–28.8 per cent.
Fourth, and top of the gossip league, are the Star and The Sun with almost identical
figures of 47.8 per cent and 48 per cent.
Table 2.1
Newspaper Circulation Editorial as News as Gossip as Features as

percentage percentage percentage percentage of
of total of editorial of editorial editorial
space
The Independent 1,225,372 55.7 82.9 10.8 6.3

The Guardian 1,397,704 51.4 81 6.2 12.8
Daily Star 1,517,000 49.7 34.4 48 17.6
The Times 1,723,689 47.2 81.6 17.1 1.3
Daily Telegraph 1,035,615 57.5 52.4 15 32.6
Daily Express 1,096,862 59.7 52.8 17.1 30.1
Daily Mirror 2,274,324 55.4 35.1 25.8 39
Daily Mail 2,371,421 59.2 46.1 28.8 25.1
The Sun 3,497,563 50 31.4 47.8 20.8
Note: Papers for May 11, 2000. First 21 pages only

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News as percentage
90
80 News
70 The Sun 31.4
Daily Star 34.4
60 Daily Mirror 35.1
50 Daily Mail 46.1
Daily Telegraph 52.4
40 Daily Express 52.8
30 The Guardian 81.0
The Times 81.6
20 The Independent 82.9
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The Guardian 6.2
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Figure 2.2
With the exception of the Star, the amount of gossip a paper contains is directly
in proportion to its circulation. It would be wrong to identify this as the only factor
affecting circulation, but it clearly has an effect.
Although the survey was limited to one day, it supports the hypothesis that the
amount of gossip, in the red tops at least, far outweighs the amount of other news.
The surprise was the mid-market papers and particularly the Daily Telegraph. The
Daily Telegraph’s circulation approaches that of the Express and is easily ahead of
its other broadsheet rivals, but it does this with a much higher gossip quotient than
the other broadsheets. Indeed its gossip quotient is very close to that of the Daily
Express, whose circulation it lags by only 61,000. The biggest surprise was that
with the exception of the Daily Star (whose circulation is about a third to a quarter
of what would be expected for its content) and The Times, charting gossip against
JOUR_C02.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 34
circulation shows a surprisingly straight line. This suggests that the amount of
gossip does indeed have a direct effect on the sales of newspapers. Of course gossip
is almost certainly not the only criterion affecting circulation. The Sun picks up
many readers with its sports coverage, while the Daily Mail targets a female audi-
ence with great success. Design, presentation, marketing, news choices and writing
styles must all play a part in the approach, but the type of news covered has a major
impact and gossip is popular with readers. There is no reason to suppose that these
news choices are any different for broadcasting or online publishers.
The problem with gossip as a central part of the news agenda is that it involves inti-
mate details of people’s lives and this may involve the invasion of privacy that so many
people abhor. On the one hand, the public complains that newspapers in particular are
far too intrusive, yet on the other they increasingly jostle for intimate details of the lives
of the celebrities. Even ordinary people are no longer immune with magazines such as
Chat using real-life tales to draw audiences. These magazines are now appearing in the
PCC’s list of adjudicated cases more often: one complaint made against Chat concerned
Sylvia Payne, who had been convicted of unlawful sex with a member of her own family
after sleeping with her teenage son. An MP complained that she had been paid for her
story. The magazine accepted that payment should not have been made and the PCC
upheld the case (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=MzkzNw==
accessed 22/6/06). In another case Pick Me Up magazine ran a story headed ‘Sins of the
cloth’, which was a woman’s account of her relationship with the vicar who conducted
her son’s funeral. Again the PCC upheld the complaint about inaccuracy.
(http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=MjE3OA== accessed 23/6/06).
News and ethics
As we have seen above, the increasing market orientation of news-orientated media

has meant that all but the public service broadcasting sector has had to chase audi-
ence rather than present quality news. The days when reporters got stories because
they were good stories that people ought to read have now almost completely gone
and stories are now gathered because they will interest the target audience and
tempt them to buy the magazine or newspaper. These marketable stories are desir-
able enough to tempt journalists to behave unethically more often than would be
the case were their motives for pursuing the story less tainted with commercialism.
Celebrity is now a major selling point for a newspaper or magazine. Publications
such as Hello! or OK! are prepared to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds for
picture spreads of an A-list celebrity’s wedding. Cheryl Tweedy of Girls Aloud and
footballer Ashley Cole allegedly set up a £1m deal for the coverage of their wedding
by OK! magazine (Millar 2006: 3). An interview with a major star of sport, screen
or TV is very hard to come by and can take months to set up. Fees are sometimes
paid and copy approval is the norm. This is where the star’s public-relations man-
agers are able to select the pictures to be used with the interview and to read the
interview, giving approval and, if necessary, making amendments of ‘fact’. This
means that A-list stars are able to determine which media carries their words and
JOUR_C02.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 35
News and ethics 35
pictures, where that appears, and that the story very carefully maintains their care-
fully-crafted image. Stars are often heard complaining about intrusion into their
privacy: Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones won a privacy case in the UK
courts for what they claimed was an invasion of privacy at their wedding by a cel-
ebrity magazine.
Such major stars are not only able to limit their appearances to key media with
copy approval but they are also able to sufficiently protect their privacy to ensure
that those are the only stories that get out. B- and C-list celebrities are obliged to
seek media exposure lower down the feeding chain in more salacious magazines or
newspapers, but still the principles are the same. Many of the so-called snatch pic-
tures of celebrities are carefully posed to ensure maximum publicity for the star
involved. People from Oscar Wilde down have produced witty quips to the effect
that there’s only one thing worse than having people talking about you and that’s
to have them not talking about you. As most press relations experts will tell you,
there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
With celebrity ruling the news agenda, and manufactured news ruling celebrity,
it can be no surprise that the temptation is there for a journalist, working for a pub-
lication that is not on the A-list celebrity’s reading requirements, to bend the rules
themselves to get work.
It is all very well for the elite – politicians, academics, intellectuals and others –
to complain about the dumbing-down of newspapers, the replacement of serious
political discussion, international news and mind-broadening information with cel-
ebrity titbits, but whilst commerce is the driving force for the media, the media will
continue to provide people with what they want and that often means celebrity
gossip. Living in a modern democratic society where education and advancement is
available to all means that we can all aspire to be wealthy and famous and that this
is no longer purely the perogative of a preordained elite. The growth of celebrity and
the removal of any qualifications for celebrity means that anyone can become a cel-
ebrity – it’s available to all, but we can only become a celebrity if others are
prepared to bow down and worship. For this reason alone, the cult of celebrity
shows no sign of abating. Most people want to read about the lives of celebrities,
lives we assume are so much better than our own. After all, they have all the things
that TV commercials and movies tell us we ought to want. Do we enjoy reading to
find out that they do have them, or that even when they have them, life is still not
easy? The number of stories in magazines like Heat about stars’ struggles with
weight, with lovers, with life in general would suggest the latter, but probably there
is a market for both: those who aspire to a celebrity lifestyle and want to read how
good it is and those who know they’ll never get there and want to read that it’s not
worth it. There is a significant number who eschew celebrity and don’t read about
it, but of course they’re the ones complaining about dumbing-down in the first
place.
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A good general book about news and its meaning is John Hartley (1982) Understanding News
(Routledge, London). John Hartley discusses Galtung and Ruge’s influential paper which can be
found in Johan Galtung and Mari Ruge (1973) ‘Structuring and Selecting News’, in Stanley
Cohen and Jock Young (eds), The Manufacture of News: Deviance, Social Problems and the Mass
Media (Constable, London). A different approach can be found in John Venables (1993) What Is
News? (ELM Publications, Huntingdon). Logistics have a significant impact on what is identified
as news and this is discussed by Philip Schlesinger (1978) in Putting Reality Together: BBC News
(Constable, London). Although this is almost thirty years old, it still identifies the problems and
if anything, the issues it raises are even more important today.
JOUR_C03.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 37
Chapter 3
M O RALITY O F R E P O RTI N G
• The freedom of the press and its conflicts with journalism

• The moral pressures journalists face working in a business attempting to both
make money and inform
• The dichotomy between freedom of expression and freedom to publish
There are a number of moral issues that are relevant to all forms of media which
underline some of the justifiable fears that many people have about the media as
commercial institutions. Although this chapter looks at these issues from the point
of view of journalism and the journalist, it is worth remembering that they affect the
whole of society and they are not just the preserve of editors and journalists.
Press freedom
Much has been written about the freedom of the press and its ‘duty’ to inform the
public. This duty is often expressed in terms of the public’s right to know in a demo-
cratic society, for instance, if someone elected to a position of authority and trust is
betraying that trust by accepting bribes. However, in practice, this duty to inform is
often used to justify publication not only of information relevant to that person’s
public office (e.g. the taking of bribes), but also of details of their private life (e.g. a
sexual liaison) which may have no direct relevance to the carrying out of their public
responsibilities, and only serve to satisfy the public’s prurient curiosity and boost
circulation or viewing figures. It is this central dilemma of press freedom that is
examined in this chapter.
Press freedom follows from the human right to freedom of expression. This was
one of the key rights that started a development of ideas amongst forward thinkers
such as John Locke in the 1600s. The ideas gained ground over the course of the
18th century with supporters such as John Wilkes and Thomas Paine and later John
Stuart Mill. Paine’s ideas took hold in the United States and were reflected in its new
constitution, and other countries also started to allow further freedoms.
Locke’s view of government was that it should be a communal affair, that men
should come together to give up their right to escape punishment by authorising
society to punish them, thereby gaining the right to have those who transgress
against them, punished. Following from this, men also gave up the right to deter-
mine the law to those they appoint. Those appointed would be responsible to those
JOUR_C03.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 38
38 3 • Morality of reporting
who appointed them. Because people have voluntarily given up their ability to
escape punishment, they gain rights; as these have not been granted by society but
are earned as society’s part of the arrangement, society cannot remove them. The
concept of human rights has developed over the past 200 years, but the essentials
remain the same. We live in a society in which we give up our right to be punished
and to make laws to those we appoint and who are therefore accountable to us. Our
basic human rights are a part of this compact.
Our right to free expression in the UK is now incorporated in the Human Rights
Act 1998. This is a version of the European Convention of Human Rights that
covers all European citizens and is similar to the US Bill of Rights, which is a series
of amendments to the US Constitution. The Human Rights Act (and European
Convention on Human Rights) states: ‘Anyone has the right to freedom of
expression. This right includes freedom of opinion and freedom to receive or com-
municate information or ideas without interference from public authorities and
regardless of borders. This article does not prevent states from subjecting radio or
television broadcasting or cinema enterprises to a system of authorisations.’
There are two key points to note here. The clause allows the right to receive
information; this is not the same as the ‘the right to know’. I would certainly like to
know all sorts of things, but that does not give me the right to know them. Some of
them might legitimately be secret or private, some may just be unknowable, some
may require some effort on my part to learn of them. However, I should have the
right to ask questions and receive information. It is not much use one person having
the right to freedom of expression if no others have the right to receive that
expression, provided they make some effort (such as buying a newspaper) to do so.
The second point about this right is that it does not talk specifically about freedom
of the press. This suggests that there might well be a difference between personal
freedom of expression and press freedom of expression. This has gained some
support in UK law which identifies differences in several statutes. Libel, for instance,
is defamation in permanent form whilst slander is transient. They are treated differ-
ently. Things are different in the USA and a number of other European countries.
The US Bill of Rights states: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establish-
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a redress of grievances.’ Here the press is specifically
mentioned and given the same protection as the people. Consequently there are dif-
ferences in media law between the USA and the UK and the two media are also
different in approach, although it would be wrong to assume that this was entirely
down to the Bill of Rights.
When considering the justification for freedom of speech, it is difficult to come
up with a better argument than John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth-century philos-
opher:
We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their
other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion and freedom of expression of opinion on four
distinct grounds which we will now briefly recapitulate. First if any opinion is compelled to silence,
JOUR_C03.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 39
that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. Secondly, though the silenced opinion
may be in error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of the truth. Thirdly, even if
the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be and actually is
vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it be held in the manner of
a prejudice. Fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled
and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal
profession. (Mill 1991: 59)
Mill makes two important points that are often forgotten by those who claim to
support freedom of speech. Even if something is true, it should be challenged on a
regular basis if it is not to become merely a dogma. These sorts of unchallengeable
beliefs eventually are held ‘in the manner of a prejudice’, no longer fully true, but
often still believed. Often these are beliefs that go on to be moral panics. Only by
rational discussion and exchange of evidence and opinion can we truly arrive at the
truth.
The second point is that the freedom to express opinion must include the freedom
to express opinion that is likely to offend. If we only exchange views that are non-
offensive and fit neatly into our present understanding of the world, then those who
seek to dominate are able to manipulate those who only want a quiet life and prefer
not to offend. History is littered with tyrants who have stamped on the views of
others by claiming that what they are saying would or has offended some group or
another. The point about freedom of expression is that we should speak out even if
we know it might offend, not because it will offend, but because it might help to
enlighten. That doesn’t mean that journalists are obliged to offend, nor that there
are not times when it would be more ethical to avoid offending, merely that offence,
by itself, is not necessarily a good reason to avoid speaking out.
The free press and democratic society
In many parts of the world, and throughout most of Europe, it is generally accepted
that some form of democratic representation is the best form of government. If
democracy is to work well and we are to exercise our right to vote responsibly, then
we need to be reasonably well-informed so that we are able to use our vote wisely
and involve ourselves in the political debates of our times.
It is by political discussion that the manual labourer, whose employment is a routine, and whose
way of life brings him in contact with no variety of impressions, circumstances, or ideas, is taught
that remote causes and events which take place far off, have a most sensible effect even on his
personal interests; and it is from political discussion, and collective political action, that one whose
daily occupations concentrate his interests in a small circle around himself, learns to feel for and
with his fellow-citizens, and becomes consciously a member of a great community. (Mill 1991:
328)
It is here that the media has its most important role – keeping the public informed
and facilitating political debate.
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But we would be fooling ourselves if we believed that democracy worked this

way everywhere in the Western world. All too often it seems that people are too
busy, too lazy, too cynical or too preoccupied to make the effort required to be well
enough informed to reach a reasoned decision on voting choices. People often vote
the way their parents did, or the way they did last time, or because of their emotive
perception of the party for which they ‘should’ be voting. However, a concern that
the system doesn’t really work as it should is no reason not to continue working for
the ideal, and this pursuit requires the continuing flow of information about what
our political masters are up to in our name. It is for this reason that it is generally
accepted in most Western countries that part of the media’s remit is to inform and
that part of that informing role will involve them in a close scrutiny of the motives
and actions of people in positions of power and trust. Of course this does not mean
that the media always provides this information and political debate any more than
that the reader always makes the effort to receive it. Most news media in the West
are run by commercial operations and their primary aim is to sell products and
make a profit – the larger the better. Their main aim is to satisfy shareholders, not
consumers, and so stories about celebrities are far more likely to be used in a
popular paper than stories about politics. Even when politics does make the front
pages, it is likely to be about issues such as tax rises that have a direct impact on the
consumer’s pocket and therefore their spending power.
Despite this tendency for national newspapers to be more interested in the activi-
ties of soap characters and the stars who play them than they are in activities at the
Palace of Westminster, people still look to the media to keep them informed of daily
news events.
A 1994 survey by the Times/Mirror Center for the People and the Press, con-
ducted in eight European countries and the USA, showed that despite sweeping
criticisms that newspapers in Britain were inaccurate, biased and intrusive, 64 per
cent of the public still felt that the news media kept politicians honest. It is worth
noting that the survey highlighted a significant split in the credibility rating between
television and newspapers in the UK (see Table 3.1), a split that was not so obvious
in other countries surveyed. Measuring whether the media had a ‘good influence’ on
society (see Table 3.2) – whilst most countries put newspapers and television within
ten percentage points of each other – British television was favoured by 66 per cent
of respondents (one of the higher marks) whilst British newspapers gained only 38
per cent support, coming virtually bottom with only one point more than Italy.
Political systems that do not require or allow the participation of all citizens
through the ballot box do not need a free media. In such a system a free media is a
potential voice of dissent that is likely to cause disruption in society. Nor is it likely
to be of use to the citizens themselves unless they are seeking to change the govern-
ment and introduce democracy:
But political discussions fly over the heads of those who have no votes, and are not endeavouring to
acquire them. Their position, in comparison with the electors, is that of the audience in a court of
justice, compared with the twelve men in the jury-box. It is not their suffrages that are asked, it is
not their opinion that is sought to be influenced. (Mill 1991: 329)
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Table 3.1 Credibility ratings
Country Television Newspapers The Church Politicians
Canada 81 71 47 53
France 74 68 35 41
Germany 90 84 40 40
Italy 67 63 52 38
Spain 64 60 40 27
United Kingdom 85 53 44 26
United States 73 68 60 49
Source: Data from The Times/Mirror Center for the People and the Press (now the Pew Center) (1994)
Table 3.2 Media have a good influence on society
Country Television Newspapers Entertainment The Church
Canada 71 73 36 61
France 55 59 39 39
Germany 49 47 18 24
Italy 50 37 26 45
Spain 64 71 33 48
United Kingdom 66 38 34 41
United States 71 74 25 73
Source: Data from The Times/Mirror Center for the People and the Press (1994)
But we should appreciate that even governments who face the ballot box on a regular
basis will do the best they can to control the information that voters have access to whilst
trying to appear as though they support a free press and greater access to information.
In the 1990s, the Tory government refused to introduce a Freedom of Information Act
because they claimed it would be too inflexible. Despite promising to introduce such an
Act if they were returned to power, it was almost two years before a Labour government
introduced a draft bill in June 1999. The bill was met with almost universal condemna-
tion as being weak and ineffective, particularly in the area of crime and health and
safety, but finally the right to information was introduced in January 2005. Only a year
after the start of the full operation of the Freedom of Information Act, the Campaign for
Freedom of Information issued a press release condemning the government, claiming:
‘Disturbing levels of requests were not being dealt with within the Act’s time limits’
(http://www.cfoi.org.uk/foi230605pr.html). But this was not the only problem: several
government departments were refusing to accept an Information Commissioner’s ruling
that civil servants’ names should not be deleted from documents provided under the Act.
The Lord Chancellor also warned that it was tightening up the rules on the costs of
inquiries made under the FoI, as civil servants were being bothered by many ‘vexatious
claims’ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/freedom/Story/0,,1699294,00.html#article_con-
tinue).
In countries where the media is even more strictly controlled, only ‘good’ news
about the government can be disseminated. It also means that few, if any, of the
JOUR_C03.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 42
ethical problems facing journalists in a free media arise. If a journalist is limited in

the sources he or she can use, is instructed by the authorities about what to write
and how to write it, and how it should be used, the debate is not about ethics but
about definitions. Indeed, it is debatable whether that person can be considered to
be a journalist at all. Without media freedom the journalist’s reason to behave in a
way which may bring about direct moral conflict no longer exists. If the journalist’s
role is confined purely to that of entertainer or propagandist, the only criteria by
which they can be judged are whether they get their work in on time and fulfil the
brief provided by their political masters. Questions about matters such as invading
privacy and obtaining information through straightforward means no longer apply;
there is no public interest defence to obtaining information in this way and there-
fore no excuse to do so. There is not even an obligation to be truthful if part of a
journalist’s job is to distort the facts to present the government in a good light.
From this discussion it is clear that only if democratic decision-making genuinely
exists does a fully free media also need to exist as a reliable source of information,
comment and analysis. Journalists only need to behave in a way which might be
morally debatable (e.g. intrude, breach people’s privacy) if they have a justification,
and surely the only justification to publish such material is the citizen’s right to
know or the public interest.
According to the 1977 Royal Commission on the Press, freedom of the press is
‘that degree of freedom from restraint which is essential to enable proprietors,
editors and journalists to advance the public interest’. However, it went on to say:
‘Freedom of the Press carries different meanings to different people’ (1977: 8). Thus
when we talk about a free media we are not necessarily talking about the media’s
right to publish anything they like, but that people, including journalists, should
have the right to spread information and ideas which can be justified morally in
order to support the public’s right to know – in other words, information published
in the public interest, not merely information to sate the public’s curiosity or desire
to be entertained. This means that any pressure brought to bear on a person and his
or her right to hold and disseminate ideas and information (whether from govern-
ment agencies, proprietors, threats or bribes from outside agencies, including
advertisers’ pressure) damages the citizen’s ability to have access to as wide a range
of views on a subject as he or she desires.
On analysis it would seem that there is almost nowhere in the world that has a
truly free media. In capitalist societies, proprietors and advertisers have a strong role
in controlling what is published or broadcast, and the line the journalist takes whilst
covering stories. Societies which are controlled by totalitarian governments, or
which face strong social control from organised religion or other sources, are also
constrained in a way which militates against a free press, and even in democratic
societies governments will try to control the information that is disseminated about
them. It is these differing social pressures and expectations which account for the
diversity of ethical views found amongst journalists around the globe.
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Freedom to publish 43
Morality and a free press
Following the news reflects and reaffirms our membership in a community of shared interests.
(Joshua Halberstam, quoted in Cohen 1992: 19)
Being part of a community brings responsibilities, yet it is only with enough infor-
mation to form meaningful views that people can make sensible, well-informed
decisions about those responsibilities and so play their part in the community. As
the journalist’s prime objective is the discovery, disclosure and analysis of the infor-
mation on which others will base their views, the decisions affecting a journalist’s
choices about what material to publish or broadcast should have as strong a moral
component as the methods used to gather that material. But often the moral
decisions are not about which news to use but about whether the text concerned is
news at all.
Journalists have to make choices all the time about what to put in or leave out of
stories, what stories to use in newspapers or broadcasts and which sources to
contact to support the stories. In Britain journalists often look at the commercial
aspect of a story. They ask themselves whether a story is going to sell papers and if
the story is what people want. It would be impossible for people to read every story
written on a particular day, even if journalists could put their hands on their hearts
and swear that they have been universal in their coverage. Consumers rely on jour-
nalists to give them the kind of information they want and journalists measure their
success at doing this by sales. However, sales are not the only measure of success for
most media. Total income, which includes income from advertising, is often con-
sidered the most important yardstick. The exceptions to this rule are the BBC and
pay-per-view channels. These organisations are of course very different in that the
first is a public service broadcaster and the second is a purely commercial concern.
However, both are able to justify their coverage on the basis of consumer needs
alone, although whether this is entirely the basis is of course open to question.
A journalist needs to determine right from the start of any story the reason why
he or she is covering it. If the reasons for covering it are morally, not just commer-
cially, viable, or if the moral reasons for using the story outweigh the moral
arguments against, then the journalist should aim to publish. However, it also needs
to be looked at in another way: is a story not being covered because it is morally,
or merely commercially, unjustifiable?
Freedom to publish
I have talked at length about the need for a free press, but the phrase ‘freedom of
the press’ also needs to be discussed. It is a phrase used often by politicians, broad-
casters and newspaper proprietors who want to use press freedom for their own
ends, and therefore their definitions of ‘freedom of the press’ will differ. Politicians
tend to see freedom of the press as the freedom to print the ‘truth’ about their oppo-
nents, whereas printing the ‘truth’ about them is interpreted as an invasion of
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privacy. Newspaper proprietors mean freedom to print whatever makes money, but
also accept that printing stories about advertisers, if they are derogatory, might
damage profits. Broadcasters want the freedom to broadcast whatever will titillate
and increase audiences to improve ratings and boost advertising revenues.
In some countries, for example Sweden, the USA and Australia, there are very
few limits on what may be printed or broadcast. Only decency and public accept-
ability prevent publication. However, in the UK, whilst paying lip service to press
freedom, we have taken the view that there should be limits on what may be printed
for a number of reasons. These limits are quite extensive and come under the fol-
lowing headings:
• Coverage of criminal proceedings
• Protection of individual honour (libel)
• Protection of commercial confidentiality
• Invasions of personal privacy
• Security and defence
• Sedition and blasphemy
• The public good (decency and good taste)
• Public order
• Prevention of terrorism
It seems to many that in the UK freedom of the press is under attack as the
number of newspaper proprietors continues to fall, allowing fewer outlets for
alternative views. Furthermore, the proprietors who remain have reduced the
number of papers they produce. There are far fewer national, regional and local
papers than there were a few years ago. In broadcasting, there are more stations, but
they are owned by fewer people and tend to have less commitment to news.
Why the media are in business
It is important to remember that most newspapers and broadcast stations in a

market economy are not in business because of high and lofty ideals; they are there
to make a profit for their owners and shareholders. This means that costs need to
be kept to the minimum, concomitant with providing a saleable product, whilst
keeping revenue, through selling advertising space and the product, as high as the
market can bear. It is a pressure of a market economy that if a revenue-generating
idea proves to be successful, other entrepreneurs will move in to exploit the profit
potential, reducing the amount of revenue available to all until the number of com-
petitors in that marketplace neatly matches the number that can exist and still
provide a reasonable return on capital invested. This means that any serious interest
that commercially-driven broadcasters and publishers have in information is
entirely based on its potential to develop revenue and therefore ultimately to make
profits.
With profit as the motive for owning and running a newspaper, it can hardly be
surprising that proprietors, and therefore editors, want to present news that costs as
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Morality and society 45
little as possible to gather, and yet provides the largest audience and thereby the
highest revenue return possible. In-depth investigative stories based around issues
are not the highest-profile stories. They are also some of the most risky in terms of
libel suits. With libel laws in Britain being some of the most repressive in the world,
a court system that is extremely costly and juries which, at the moment, are highly
unsympathetic to the media, it is a brave editor who will stick his or her neck out
to run an investigative story about sharp practice in the City and risk a law suit
which could cost several millions rather than a kiss-and-tell exposé of some cel-
ebrity.
Morality and society
Most societies in the world feel strongly about some area of media ethics and ensure
appropriate behaviour by legislating in that area. It is perfectly legitimate for soci-
eties to reach a consensus about what is acceptable for the media to publish or, more
usually, not publish. Nearly all societies, for instance, prevent the publication of
defence information that could put at risk the nation’s security. In some societies,
privacy is very important and so the law covers privacy, whereas in others the pre-
sumption of innocence is paramount and there the law will cover that and perhaps
make no mention of privacy.
The emphasis that societies place on matters such as privacy and the way they
deal with them differs greatly. For example, in France, the law covers a wide range
of issues that are dealt with by other countries in their press codes of ethical
conduct. It is no surprise therefore that France, with its tough constitution and laws,
has a limited code of journalistic conduct whilst Sweden, which has practically no
legislation in the area of ethical media activity, has a strong code and regulatory
media council that is taken very seriously by practitioners.
Where there is strong law in a country for one area of journalistic morality, it
often happens that the journalists in that country cease to see that area as a moral
problem at all, except in very general terms. For instance, in Britain, journalists are
restricted in what they report on criminal proceedings by a number of statutes. The
1981 Contempt of Courts Act lays down that once someone has been arrested, or a
warrant has been issued for their arrest, nothing may be published or broadcast
which ‘creates a substantial risk that the course of justice in particular legal proceed-
ings will be seriously impeded or prejudiced’ providing the proceedings are ‘active’.
This is called ‘strict liability contempt’ because there is no need to prove that there
was any intention to prejudge a trial, only that there was a substantial, serious risk
to an active proceedings. Should there be evidence that the matter was published
intentionally to prejudice proceedings, then the older common law definition of con-
tempt of court could still be used.
Once a matter comes to a trial the media can report provided it is a fair and accu-
rate report of public legal proceedings published contemporaneously and in good
faith. In addition, the court can make orders to hear evidence in private in certain
circumstances and it is also, under section 8 of the 1981 Act, a contempt to ‘obtain,
JOUR_C03.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 46
disclose or solicit any particular statements made, opinions expressed, arguments

advanced or votes cast by members of a jury in the course of their deliberations in
any legal proceedings’. This means that British journalists tend to think of the issue
of covering court cases in terms of the law rather than morality. Whereas a US jour-
nalist might take an ethical decision when considering whether to interview a jury
member or talk to a witness before a trial, a British journalist would not even con-
sider interviewing a juror about that particular case as he or she would know this
could be illegal and therefore pointless.
If a journalist is obliged by law to do, or not do, a certain action, then there can
be no feeling of moral obligation. In practice this seems to have the effect of eventu-
ally eroding a person’s consideration of the underlying moral principle that applies
in that particular area. Doubtless the same would be true for journalists if the laws
of contempt of court were removed. Present loopholes in the law are used at every
opportunity for a story regardless of the ethical considerations, so, if the laws were
removed, journalists would certainly have a field day with court coverage.
Morality and commerce
Another important factor in the ethical debate is market forces. Most Western jour-
nalists work in a marketplace to some degree or another. Even if their newspapers
or broadcasts are being consumed by a captive audience (public service broad-
casters, for instance, or journalists working for fixed circulation publications), they
still end up working to performance criteria which have audience approval as a
major component. This inevitably puts pressure on the journalist to follow market-
driven journalism rather than adhering to an ethical value system. Journalists will
then often deceive themselves that they are doing the right thing by publishing a
story which by any other standard would be considered unethical. Essentially this is
an issue of loyalty. To whom does the journalist owe loyalty? Is it the employer, the
consumer, the advertiser, the law, or some other authority?
The drive to improve circulation or viewing figures can tempt a journalist to use
a story that morally-driven caution might have persuaded him or her not to have
used. This shows loyalty to the employer; a chance for the company to boost
profits by improving circulation or viewing figures and self-serving ambition. A
journalist who is loyal to an employer and helps to boost profits is bound to be a
more marketable talent. For the same reason, some journalists may allow them-
selves to back away from a story out of loyalty to the company or an advertiser or
both. They may go along with an instruction not to cover a story because it con-
cerns a major advertiser or potential advertiser, even though the journalist may
feel that morally the readers should be told about the advertiser’s questionable
practices.
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Morality and the consumer 47
Morality and the consumer
Sometimes journalists will consider the consumer only when making ‘moral’ judge-
ments. The argument is often put forward that a particular item has been published
because the consumer wants to read it and therefore it must be accepted that it is
morally right to publish. The reader has bought the edition of the paper or maga-
zine and, because of the direct link between consumer and circulation, there is the
proof that the newspaper was right to publish the item. However, the journalist or
publisher is then upset when the decision to publish is attacked as being immoral
and tries to blame the reader for acting immorally by buying the product: if the con-
sumer had not wanted this article, he or she should not have bought the publication.
This argument was raised in connection with the press coverage of the relation-
ship between Diana, Princess of Wales and her friend Dodi Al Fayed, and the
backlash against the press that followed their deaths. Max Hastings, the editor of
the London Evening Standard, put forward the argument that editorial judgement
was driven solely by market considerations. As news and photographs of the
princess raised circulation figures, newspapers were right to publish them and would
only cease when the public no longer wanted them. The late Sir David English, then
chairman of the PCC Code of Practice Committee, considered that the public reac-
tion against the press at that time was a warning: ‘Public opinion . . . was telling us
loud and clear that we needed to look to our laurels’ (PCC 1997: 15). Journalists
and editors are often tempted to blame the consumer for buying the newspaper or
magazine containing unethical material. If people didn’t buy it, runs the argument,
journalists would not run the stories. But the consumer cannot be blamed for buying
a publication that contains material that is unethical for the following reasons:
• The consumer may be entirely unaware that the publication contains unethical
material.
• Even when a consumer is aware that a publication contains material which is at
the centre of moral controversy, he or she cannot be expected to make an
ethical judgement until they have seen the article or pictures in question.
• A journalist uses the material knowing that many will be unable to resist
buying something over which there has been so much fuss – if only to find out
what everyone is talking about.
• The moral judgement about whether or not to use the material is the
journalist’s alone and is not a decision that can or should be shared with the
consumer. The consumer’s moral judgement that they ought not to be reading
that story cannot encompass the moral judgement about printing the material
in the first place.
As the case of the Princess of Wales illustrates, debates about morality often
centre around the area of invasion of privacy. Journalists no longer debate whether
it would be morally right to use this story or that image, but look merely at the com-
mercial implications, as the view expressed by Max Hastings highlights. The
question raised concerns about whether more people will buy the paper than will be
put off if a particular story or picture is published.
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The rights to freedom of speech and access to certain information apply as

equally to journalists as they do to private citizens. Journalists have always resisted
attempts to make them different, partly because if the media were to have special
privileges it might also be expected to have special obligations. However, this is not
the case throughout the world and in some European countries journalists have
special rights and special rights of access to information unavailable to the general
public. In Belgium, for instance, journalists have special travel rights and cut-price
telephone calls. In Portugal, journalists have special rights of access to government
sources of information and a legal right not to be coerced into acting against their
consciences, whilst in both Portugal and Italy, journalists cannot work for the media
without being registered and obtaining a press card. France, Britain, Luxembourg
and the Netherlands all have national identity card schemes in cooperation with the
police. These are voluntary and you can operate as a journalist without them, but
they do make working in dramatic situations such as demonstrations, riots and dis-
asters much easier.
The right to a free press needs to be handled with considerable care. People’s rep-
utations, possibly even their lives, could be at stake when journalists are probing
into areas which, without the justification of the public interest, would normally be
left alone. In such instances professional morality becomes crucially important.
Without the concepts of freedom of speech and the protection of democracy, a jour-
nalist would find it almost impossible to justify underhand methods of gathering
information such as those involved in the Guardian ‘cod’ fax episode (Case study
3.1).
Case study 3.1 Professional morality and the public interest

It would be naive to suggest that every covert investigation carried out by a journalist
could be completely justified by freedom of speech and the public interest. However,
some stories of major public interest can only be exposed by using deceit or trickery.
Long focal lenses and bugging devices, false identities and theft have all been used in
order to obtain stories.
The Guardian newspaper, intent on showing that Jonathan Aitken, a Conservative
MP, was corrupt, was trying to prove that Mr Aitken had stayed at the Ritz Hotel in
Paris at the expense of Mr Mohammed Al-Fayed, the hotel’s owner. Mr Al-Fayed, also
the owner of Harrods, was cooperating with the newspaper and Mr Peter Preston,
Editor-in-Chief of the Guardian, had no wish to reveal that he was the source of the
information and had therefore breached client confidentiality. Instead, the Guardian
sent a fax to the hotel on House of Commons notepaper, purporting to be from Mr
Aitken asking about the bill.
Was the story worth the deceit? Peter Preston didn’t think so later on when he apol-
ogised to the Commons Privileges Committee for sending the ‘cod fax’, saying it was a
‘stupid and discourteous thing to have done’. ‘The committee concluded that Mr
Preston and the Guardian were “guilty of unwise and improper conduct”’ (The
Independent, 25 January 1996).
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Limiting what information journalists can gather 49
The trouble with freedom of speech is that it is rights-based, not virtue-based. It

is not possible to measure an excess or frugality of freedom of speech. Freedom of
speech is an absolute; either you have it or you don’t. If freedom of speech is
removed in even the smallest part, then it risks being removed almost in its entirety.
That is not to say that there should not be limits placed on the average work of the
journalist, but it has to be understood that any limitation on freedom of expression
has to be justified, because otherwise it is a restriction that could eventually lead to
the loss of that freedom. Of course if I were to damage someone’s reputation, then
it is only reasonable that that person should be able to lay suit against me for
damages, and so I would need to take care that I did not put myself or the publi-
cation I work for at risk. Other rights granted under the appropriate convention
also need to be considered when measuring whether one should fully press freedom
of expression. People’s right to privacy, liberty, security, fair trial and presumption
of innocence could all be adversely affected by my using my freedom of expression
and opinion. This is why the freedom of the media is not directly the same as the
freedom of the individual. My right to freedom of expression when I am there to
answer directly for my views can be entirely open and only if I can be shown to have
acted with malice, or have recklessly set out to deceive or blacken someone’s name
without regard for the consequences of my actions should there be legal repercus-
sions. But when I express opinions that can be heard or read by millions, without
my being there to take the blame, when my views can reach a wide audience
instantly, other safeguards are felt to be required by society. I must handle such
power far more responsibly, and society should have the power to be able to insist
that I can defend my decision to publish what I have to that wider audience. But
otherwise, the free press is an extension of freedom of speech.
There are four main areas of a journalist’s work in which professional morality
may place a limit on freedom to publish or broadcast. They are:
• The limits that are placed on what information is gathered;
• The limits that are placed on how that information is gathered;
• The limits that are placed on what information is published;
• Guaranteeing the quality of the information that is published.
Limiting what information journalists can gather
It is confusing and concerning that many people in Britain, and indeed in several
other countries, appear to support freedom of speech and a free press whilst sup-
porting censorship on specific matters. In a Times/Mirror Center (now the Pew
Center) for the People and the Press survey taken in 1994 a worryingly low 52 per
cent of Britons said they supported a free press (the lowest of all the countries sur-
veyed). Yet 71 per cent of respondents in Britain favoured censorship to discourage
terrorism, an even higher figure than those who would welcome censorship to
restrict portrayals of explicit sex (72 per cent). Many might say this is because of
the high levels of terrorism in this country, yet both Spain and Italy, which face
JOUR_C03.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 50
similar problems, had much lower numbers of respondents calling for censorship
(62 per cent and 42 per cent, respectively) (see Table 3.3).
The 1987–95 British broadcast ban, which prevented the broadcast of the voices
of certain politicians, particularly those from Sinn Fein, the political wing of the
Irish Republican Army (IRA), was a relatively thin edge of an extremely dangerous
wedge. Although there were many who believed that removing the ‘oxygen of pub-
licity’ would stifle the IRA and therefore reduce the violence, there is no evidence
that this was the case; indeed it defies logic. Violence is often the last resort of those
who are otherwise unheard. Censoring the views and opinions of those who believe
they have legitimate grievances or complaints is an almost guaranteed way of
ensuring that they start using more direct and often violent methods. The present
upsurge of Islamist terrorism and protest around the world is an argument for lis-
tening more closely, not for restricting freedom of the media. It is a dangerously
small step to move from accepting the principle that there are certain people in
society who do not have the right to speak and be heard, to gagging anyone whose
opinions are not welcome by the ruling group. Not acknowledging this is to live in
ignorance of, or indifference to, the evidence presented by scores of tyrannical gov-
ernments around the world who have imprisoned journalists, political opponents
and others who have voiced opinions that were not welcome.
So, despite a worrying lack of support, free speech and a free press in Britain are
essential to the free style of democracy that we all seem to favour, whether by choice
or apathy, and, because of this, the journalist needs to take care that he or she does
not step over the invisible mark that divides responsible reporting from licence to
allow editorial choice to become censorship.
Should there be any limits set on the information journalists gather? The govern-
ment certainly thinks there should and a number of laws are in place preventing
journalists from researching stories involving some issues. The Official Secrets Act
1989 is one of these. The Act makes it an offence for a journalist to enquire into any
government business that could be deemed sensitive without the approval of a min-
ister of state. Of course, this is not the only law that governs what information
journalists may gather. There are various Acts limiting the information a reporter
may gather on crime. The Contempt of Court Act 1981, Sexual Offences
(Amendment) Act 1976, Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, Criminal
Table 3.3 Support for censorship to discourage terrorism or displays of explicit sex
Country Terrorism Explicit sex
Canada 68 65
France 82 67
Germany 61 67
Italy 42 43
Spain 62 49
United Kingdom 71 72
United States 60 59
Source: Data from the Pew Center

JOUR_C03.QXP 8/2/07 10:50 Page 51
Justice Act 1991, Criminal Evidence and Youth Justice Act 1999 and others all limit
what information can be either gathered or published.
Inevitably, there are also ethical issues to be considered when gathering infor-
mation and these can place limits on a reporter. They are mainly concerned with
issues of privacy and intrusion. For instance, exactly how much information should
a journalist be entitled to gather about an individual?
Limiting how journalists gather information
There must also be limits to the way journalists obtain their information. For
example, paying criminals for their stories is seen as unacceptable by the public in
most countries. Society takes the view that criminals should not profit from their
crimes and so the idea of a newspaper or broadcast station paying a criminal for his
or her story is one that upsets many people. Intruding into private places, harassing
people, and deceit are also methods of obtaining information which are usually seen
as unacceptable unless they are ‘in the public interest’, as illustrated by the Guardian
investigation into politicians taking free hospitality (Case study 3.1).
Limiting what information journalists can publish
There are some limits on the information that can be published by news sources in
even the most free of societies. Protecting the reputation of citizens, preventing
excessive invasions of privacy and intrusion, protecting the innocence of those
facing court proceedings are all rights protected under the UN Declaration of
Human Rights, clause 12 and, if only for this reason, citizens expect state support
for their rights. Most countries have laws of defamation and some, like France, have
privacy laws. There have been defamation laws in Britain since the reign of King
Alfred, who used to have the tongues of slanderers cut out. Countries which do not
have laws about issues such as privacy (Germany, the UK and Sweden) usually have
codes of conduct in these areas.
Many individuals and public figures have complained about excessive press intru-
sion into matters they feel should remain entirely private and many have called for
tougher laws to protect their privacy (see Case study 3.2).
Of course, the media should have some right to invade a citizen’s privacy, pro-
vided there is a justification of public interest in the affair. This can be loosely
defined as the public’s right to know about something which is being done privately
by someone and which is against the general or specific interests of society.
Guaranteeing the quality of information published
A journalist and his or her publisher must be answerable to their consumers for the
quality of information that they provide. Clearly truth and accuracy have a part to
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Case study 3.2 Privacy and press freedom

Earl Spencer, brother of the late Princess of Wales, began a campaign for tougher
privacy laws after what he considered was intrusive press reporting about his marriage
and the illness of Countess Spencer, his former wife.
In 1995 the News of the World published a front-page article saying that Countess
Spencer was in a clinic. A photograph showed the Countess walking in the grounds of
a clinic where she was receiving treatment for eating disorders and alcoholism. At the
time a number of other tabloid newspapers also carried reports about the couple’s
marital problems.
The earl complained to the Press Complaints Commission, which later upheld his
complaint and condemned the newspapers involved for their intrusive reporting. He
then took his campaign for a tougher privacy law to the European Commission of
Human Rights in Strasbourg. But the Commission rejected his attempt to take the
British government to court, ruling that there were insufficient grounds for starting a
case in the court over the government’s alleged failure to protect the earl and countess
under the European Convention on Human Rights. The Commission accepted the
government’s argument that British law provided adequate remedies to protect privacy
and that the press code of conduct, monitored by the PCC, offered adequate safeguards
to the right to privacy.
The rejection of the Spencer case means that Britain’s law on privacy and press
freedom will not be tested by the Strasbourg court. However, there have been recent
developments that may change how complaints against the media are dealt with and
these could have important implications for journalists. On 21 January 1998 Sir
William Wade, a leading constitutional lawyer in Britain, told a legal conference that
because of the Human Rights Act (which received Royal Assent in autumn 1998)
people will now take the media to court over privacy claims rather than going to the
PCC. This reinforces the view that the new law will lead to a privacy right being devel-
oped by the courts. At the time of writing, no one is certain how the Human Rights Act
will affect the media.
play in guaranteeing the quality of information (see Chapter 5). All journalists and
editors have an obligation to be honest with their public about the quality of infor-
mation provided. However, this guarantee of quality of information is not
something that can be instantly provided and some news outlets can be considered
more reliable than others.
A recent survey by the BBC, Reuters and Media Centre of the levels of trust the
British public places in the media has shown an increase in levels of trust over the
early years of the new millennium. However, trust in British media is still low com-
pared to that in many other countries. National television is most trusted with 82
per cent of adults trusting it, followed by 75 trusting national newspapers. Despite
the increase, Britain was still the only country where more people were likely to
trust the government than the news media (Smith 2006b: 14)
That national TV should top the poll is not a surprise. The BBC World Service,
for instance, has a superb reputation worldwide and when changes were suggested
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in 1996, these were strongly opposed by many who saw the new practices as dam-
aging to the service’s unrivalled reputation for unsensationalised, accurate and
balanced coverage which had been built up in more than fifty years of broadcasting.
BBC Director-General John Birt had planned to cut back programme-making dras-
tically, whilst moving the radio newsroom to a combined newsroom in West
London. This would have meant sharing with domestic services and therefore intro-
ducing a slightly different approach to the news-gathering. The move was opposed
by the former World Service Managing Director, John Tusa, the novelist P.D.
James, a Conservative peer and former BBC governor, John McCarthy, Mark Tully
and Sir George Solti, to name just a few. A mass lobby was held outside Parliament
on 2 July 1996 (Journalist, August/September 1996: 9). Also in 1996, a sub-editor
who was sacked from the Sport for allegedly making up quotes was reported in The
Journalist (The NUJ’s magazine) as saying: ‘We did this all the time. I have invented
quotes for her often before . . .’ (Journalist, August/September 1996: 8). The BBC
World Service and the Sport can be seen as spanning the range of reliability in the
British media, from a news service relied on by state leaders to one that is not taken
seriously. Yet both have a place in the media market and both employ journalists
who take their work seriously.
The decisions journalists make about the extent of their research, and the extent to
which they correlate sources, depend on the needs of their audience. The quality of
information they provide will vary depending upon the market and its requirements.
For instance, readers of the Sport appear only to require titillation from stories that
do not need to be honest, truthful, accurate or balanced. Their view of the world will
only be changed peripherally by what they read and they are unlikely to base decisions
of any importance on the stories and information contained in the Sport. However,
even though readers are unlikely to believe any particular story, the continued diet of
stories of a such a titillating nature about supposedly sexually available women might
damage their view of the world and be more likely to lead them to hold women in low
esteem. Academics are still researching the notion that our view of normality is
affected by what we see in the media, but most of the work is centred around fictional
violence rather than supposedly factual stories. It seems to me that the debate about
whether Reservoir Dogs or Tom and Jerry alter our views about the acceptability of
violence is an entirely different one from whether a consistent diet of supposedly
truthful stories about the sexual antics of other people affects someone’s view of what
is normal. Publications which do not rely on stories that are true and accurate are not
confined to the UK. Weekly World News is an American publication that contains
truly fantastical stories. Some of the greatest front pages include such shockers as
‘Society matron commits suicide – after breaking wind at swanky dinner party’
(Weekly World News, 26 November 1996: 27) and ‘Doc throws up in heart patient’s
surgical opening – and kills her!’ (Weekly World News, 22 November 1994: 19).
Clearly, the journalist is giving the readers what they want and boosts circulation by
so doing. The audience wants largely titillating fiction and that’s what is provided.
The quality of the information content is very low, but the entertainment value is high.
While this formula works reasonably well with extremes such as the Sport and
the Weekly World News, the majority of news providers lie somewhere in the
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middle. They want to provide their audience with entertaining stories but they also
want those stories to have credibility so that the consumer will continue to consider
them as a competent supplier of news. It is here that the temptation grows to
provide stories that are not as thoroughly supported by sources as they should be
because they are entertaining to the target audience. For a paper such as The Sun,
which is bought for its entertainment value rather than its ability to inform with a
high degree of credibility, it is easier to print stories that are not so well sourced. For
the Daily Telegraph, which draws an audience that requires a high degree of credi-
bility to its information, an entertaining story that withstood only a cursory analysis
would be very damaging to its sales. Its readers would soon switch to another pub-
lication if its stories were regularly proved to be wrong.
Exhibit 3.1 Testing the credibility of news stories

There are two main ways that we can check the information we are given by news
outlets:
1. We can test it against our knowledge, our experience of the outlet, and scepticism.
2. We can test it by accessing primary sources and checking the information.
For instance, if a tabloid newspaper reported that a Conservative Home Secretary
was going to legalise cannabis, we might well, as readers, be sceptical. After all, the
Conservative party has long supported the banning of drugs for recreational use. The
paper that the story appears in does not have a good reputation for total accuracy and
may well have distorted whatever element of truth there is in order to get a better story.
However, if a broadsheet was running the same story, it would be more likely to make
us accept the story. This is partly because we would be given more information from a
wider range of sources, together with a more detailed analysis of the issue, which might
well make the story more convincing. Perhaps the new Home Secretary is a libertarian
from the far right of the party who believes there should be no restrictions on the sale
of drugs provided their purity is assured.
Television and radio news would be able to go even further in convincing us to
accept the story. A short introduction and a quick interview with the Home Secretary
saying, ‘I believe that making drugs illegal is counterproductive. It sets up a criminal
sub-class and robs the Treasury of potential billions in excise revenue. I intend to
legalise them all tomorrow and set up a drugs consumer bureau which will ensure the
quality of all drugs on sale’ might well shock and surprise the electorate but would
leave no doubt about the veracity of information. It is the ability to hear, or see and
hear, the prime sources that helps make broadcasting so potent in news reporting.
While we need to remain aware of the ability of the reporter to pick and choose the
sound bites used, we are still able to confirm for ourselves that the words were used and
we can make our own minds up about whether the person who spoke them was telling
the truth and meant what he or she said.
The need to guarantee the information that a source provides raises the following
ethical issues for the journalist (these are considered in detail in the chapters indi-
cated):
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• Guaranteeing sources for information (Chapter 7).

• How those sources are reported (Chapter 7).
• The reporting of comment as fact (Chapter 5).
• Image manipulation, including video and film editing (Chapter 6).
• Playing fair with interviewees, e.g. using material on/off the record (Chapter 4).
• The selection of news (Chapter 2).
• Bribes and corruption of sources and reporters (Chapter 11).
• Protection of sources (Chapter 11).
It is important to remember that the issues discussed in this chapter will arise only
in a democratic society which respects and values freedom of speech. In a country
which no longer allows free speech and a free press there will be laws limiting the
amount and the quality of information that can be published. What information can
be gathered and published is already controlled for the journalist and editor. The
only ethical consideration remaining to journalists working in such countries is how
to regulate the way information is obtained. But this is really a sterile debate because
with strict limits on what information a journalist can gather and what he or she
can publish, how they gather it is not likely to be a problem area. The law or the
government has taken over the main duties of ethics. However, in a democratic
society ethical considerations become an important aspect of the journalist’s work.
The driving force for the ethical debate within the media is to help journalists
perform to the standards needed and expected by the culture in which they work,
despite the restrictions laid down by the same culture, either directly by its social
expectations or indirectly by government edict.
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Chapter 4
TH E G O O D J O U R NALI ST
• The meaning of the term ‘a good journalist’

• The separation of publishing and journalism
What is a good journalist? There is no one answer to this question. The kinds of
attribute that would be valued by colleagues would not necessarily be the same as
those sought by the public or consumers. For instance, an editor would probably
value reliability and the ability to produce exciting stories to a deadline. The reader,
however, might think that above all a journalist should be highly principled and
truthful, even though they appreciate the exciting or controversial stories he or she
has written. How then does the journalist decide what is good journalism? Which
aspects of a journalist’s work are the most important? And how should journalists
approach the stories they cover? We need to look at how journalists work in order
to help explain why they take some of the decisions they do, and to offer ethical
guidance that might help journalists improve their decision-making.
What is a good journalist?
Some people have attempted to produce a definition of a good journalist. David

Randall tells us there is only ‘good or bad journalism’ (1996: 1). Dismissing liberal
journalism, Western journalism and a host of other adjectival journalisms, he goes
on to produce a list that he claims describes the ‘good’ journalist. The list is too long
to print here and it does little to help us to decide what a good journalist is, although
it certainly contains a number of the functions that most people would happily
ascribe to a ‘good’ journalist. Randall believes that this list is universal, and con-
demns the cultural differences that can easily be spotted between journalists across
the world as being evidence of bad journalism. It seems to me that there are several
definitions of a good journalist, depending on where you are standing in both a
global and hierarchical sense.
If I were a newspaper editor employing a journalist, I would certainly have a firm
idea of the qualities I was seeking in a good journalist. They would include:
• An ability to recognise a good news story.
• An ability to find stories that would attract readers.
• An ability to persuade people to talk to them about their experiences.
• An ability to take a good note.
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What is a good journalist? 57
• A willingness to work hard and put in long hours.

• An ability to write well.
• Punctuality.
• Trustworthiness and reliability.
• The ability to use the word processing system used by the newspaper.
• Honesty with their expenses.
• Someone who did not demand an excessive salary.
If you look in the Guardian media section or the Press Gazette – the journalist’s
trade magazine – you will find jobs advertised for reporters that list many of these
qualities, or at least imply them.
However, if we were to ask a newspaper reader what they would look for in a
good journalist, we would see some different answers. So long as the journalist
found interesting, dramatic and truthful stories and wrote them up well, his or her
punctuality, knowledge of a particular computer system, or willingness to work
long hours for poor pay would be of little concern to the reader. The people fea-
tured in the stories would seek yet a different set of qualities. They would want the
journalist to be capable of taking a good note, to be accurate and to write well. They
would also want punctuality, reliability and honesty. Of course prioritising charac-
teristics can be in the journalist’s best interest. While a journalist is never going to
be paid more than what an editor needs for a journalist, one who combines
workaday values such as reliability and punctuality with professional virtues such
as the ability to track down a good story is more employable and is more likely to
earn better pay.
Clearly, it is possible to produce a list of characteristics that a good journalist
should possess, as David Randall has done, but it is up to each individual journalist
to decide which of them are important and which should have priority. The jour-
nalist has a moral duty to decide which characteristics he or she will choose to
display while doing their job and to make an evaluative choice about which quali-
ties are more important. It is tempting to think that one can display a different set
of values at different times: one set in the office for the editor and another out on
the job with a contact. But this is not really possible. The drive to be loyal to an
editor may make a journalist choose to sensationalise a story in order to make it
seem more exciting and therefore more saleable, but this cannot be achieved while
still pretending to choose accuracy for both the reader and the contact. A journalist
can either satisfy a moral directive to be accurate or make his or her newspaper
more marketable by building up a story beyond the point where accuracy can be
guaranteed.
So far I have been talking about moral goodness, but there are other forms of
action and it is often difficult to separate these from the moral actions that are the
main concern of this book. Kant identified this when he talked about there being
three types of imperatives. Categorical imperatives are about morality – actions
done for no other reason than the rightness of the action. But Kant identified two
other sorts of actions. The first of these is the Hypothetical imperative. This is a pru-
dential action. If we are crossing the road and a bus comes hurtling towards us, we
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58 4 • The good journalist
would hurry to get out of the way, because otherwise we risk pain, injury or death.
It is possible to say that this action is good, but it is not a categorical imperative
carried out solely because the act itself is good. It is only carried out because the
action leads to a desirable outcome: in this case saving our life and also not putting
others at risk or even causing them upset, but in other circumstances we might stand
firm in front of the bus because our intended outcome is to force it to stop. There is
nothing inherently good in either standing or not standing in front of the bus: only
the desired outcome can determine what we should do. A categorical imperative is
carried out without any particular end in view; it is done solely because it is the right
thing to do, regardless of outcome. An action done solely to achieve the desired
outcome as motive is a hypothetical imperative, just as when hammering nails one
endeavours to keep thumbs and fingers clear of the hammer; our purpose is to keep
our fingers safe from injury. At other times we might be obliged to put fingers in the
way of the hammer, in order to hold a nail for instance, so that the outcome deter-
mines our behaviour, not a moral principle.
The second imperative identified by Kant is the Technical imperative. This is the
rule of skill that does not ask whether the purpose is reasonable or good, it only asks
what must be done to attain it. A good carpenter knows how to ensure his or her
fingers are not struck whilst hammering a nail, but whether the nails are used to
hold together some useful piece of joinery or as some macabre torture is not the
issue. Equally, for a journalist there are a number of skills the acquisition of which
is essential if one is to become a good journalist, but that does not mean such a good
journalist is necessarily a morally good journalist. Good writing skills can be used
to write lies as well as truth; the ability to draw information from people during an
interview can be used for both justice and defamation. A journalist’s technical skill
is no indicator of their moral calibre. This type of imperative is solely about func-
tion. We call a knife that is capable of cutting well a good knife, but it has no
decision-making powers – we decide where it will cut and what. The same is true of
the journalist. The amoral journalists may be a good journalist in the sense that they
can write well, take a good shorthand note and persuade sources to divulge infor-
mation they would rather keep secret but they will not be moral in that they would
always do as directed whether that is good or bad.
So there are three principles: ‘rules of skill, counsels of prudence or commands
(laws) of morality’ (Kant 1990: 33). All them apply in the day-to-day work of the
journalist. Of course a poor journalist will not even have sufficient moral fibre to
become a good journalist in the technical sense, so the first step to becoming a good
journalist in the full sense of the word is mastery of the technical skills, but tech-
nique without the inclination to apply moral judgement through the use of a code
or some other method is not sufficient.
Journalistic duty
Categorical imperatives are an important decision-making tool. They are the foun-
dation of codes of conduct and often fit well into the way that journalists work.
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Endeavouring to be truthful and accurate are clear categorical imperatives and do

not require any interpretation, or concern about consequence. A journalist should
attempt to tell the truth because it is the moral thing to do; we can justify it through
logic and do not need to consider what the consequences of our action might be. But
there are other ethical dilemmas that do not fit so easily into this, ‘never mind the
consequences’ style of decision-making.
Some ethical issues require a consequential approach. Conflicting imperatives
might mean that the journalist has to follow through potential situations. If keeping
a promise means telling a lie, or telling the truth might put lives at risk, or informing
the public about what they deserve to know means invading someone’s privacy,
then there are other factors that need to be taken into account. One of the key
factors is loyalty. This could be described as duty or obligation, but since this duty
or obligation could, under different circumstances or mindsets be as easily applied
to one group as another, with different outcomes, I prefer to describe it as loyalty.
Loyalty is a difficult concept. It has often been seen as something that is an obli-
gation that should be accepted without debate. Loyalty to country, for instance, is
something that is required under certain circumstances whether agreed with or not.
The approach of much of the US media in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 made it
clear that dissent from the position ‘my country right or wrong’ was not well-
received within the United States. Loyalty to flag and country was expected and
rational debate about what that might mean and whether it was right, was not
acceptable. Loyalty is not a value that should become a categorical imperative. We
should never agree to attach our loyalty to a particular group regardless of the cir-
cumstances. So in this way, it cannot be a true duty or obligation as our loyalty has
to be constantly rethought as the circumstances and potential consequences change.
We can therefore use our perception of our loyalties at any given time to help us
decide where our duty or obligation lies and, within the changing circumstances,
which consequences we would find acceptable.
Deciding to whom you owe loyalty is an important component of working out
what you should do in any moral dilemma. Clearly, the journalist is working in a
field in which there are a number of potentially conflicting loyalties. For instance,
journalists have contractual duties as employees, they have professional duties, and
duties of general public responsibility. It follows that the journalist’s obligation to
choose how he or she performs their work may depend on whom they feel most
loyalty towards: the reader, the employer, or some other figure. The following
groups are ones towards whom a journalist may owe a loyalty under certain circum-
stances. Some are clearly of more significance than others.
The reader
Maintaining trust with readers means dealing fairly with them by providing them
with the information they want in a truthful and timely manner. This raises a
number of questions, e.g. how do journalists decide what information readers want;
how do they ensure truthfulness? Since most of the moral components of the good
journalist’s approach hinge on loyalty and fair dealing, the journalist who deals
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fairly with consumers, refusing to trick them or lie to them, stands a better chance
of behaving morally than a journalist who treats consumers with contempt.
The editor
Find and produce stories that sell and which do not get the editors into trouble with
consumers, complaints commissions, etc., and editors will be happy. Since keeping
the editor happy is usually good for one’s career, whether in terms of money, ambi-
tion or simply pleasanter working conditions, this loyalty may well take precedence
over others. It is probably fair to say that loyalty to the editor is generally the most
significant to many journalists. The editor has the power to dismiss a journalist and
so many journalists do what they feel is necessary in order to please the editor. This
loyalty of course extends down through the management structure and so loyalty to
the news editor or chief reporter is an extension of loyalty to the editor.
The advertiser
Advertisers will be upset when, having paid thousands of pounds for a major cam-
paign in a newspaper or with a broadcast station, they find that the journalists on
the same outlet are running derogatory stories about their products. Their objec-
tions inevitably get back to the editor and may be bad for business, and bad for the
career of the journalist concerned. Although this loyalty rarely outweighs that to the
reader, it does happen and we need to be aware of its potential to distort news selec-
tion and to limit the complete truthfulness of a report. Some journalists like to think
that the advertiser plays no part in their thinking about story choice and coverage,
but over an extended period that is both naive and unlikely. However, most jour-
nalists would prefer to limit loyalty to advertisers, viewing the attempts of
advertisers to influence coverage as crass commercialism. There are exceptions, of
course, and Charles Wintour told the Royal Commission on the Press that it was
not wrong to give some degree of preference to stories which advertise ‘provided
their products are good – and they are unlikely to waste money advertising unless
they are . . . those that help keep our own shop open are entitled to a little extra
limelight’ (Royal Commission on the Press 1977: 105). The Commission had been
investigating the influence of advertising saying that in the past the press had been
heavily criticised on the grounds that advertisers exercised too much influence on
the content of newspapers. Such accusations had been one of the reasons for setting
up the Commission, but the Commission found little evidence that this was hap-
pening. It had received evidence of ‘one or two complaints of attempts to silence
criticism’. It saw such threats as deplorable although it agreed ‘it is easy to see why
advertisers should resent it when they are subsidizing with their payments a publi-
cation which attacks them or their products or service’ (ibid.).
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The proprietor
The proprietor is not only concerned about keeping the advertisers happy but is also
keen to boost circulation. He or she may also have private areas of concern (be they
political, commercial, or private) that he or she would like to publicise or hush up.
Rupert Murdoch, for instance, likes BSkyB satellite television to be promoted in
other News International products, such as The Sun. He is also prepared to protect
his commercial interests by refusing to publish things he fears might be damaging.
Consider the refusal to publish a book by the former governor of Hong Kong, Chris
Patten. Mr Patten had been commissioned to write a book, East and West: The Last
Governor of Hong Kong, by one of Murdoch’s publishers, HarperCollins. In
January 1998, they told him that the first six chapters did not meet ‘reasonable
expectations’ and also leaked a story to a Sunday paper that the book was ‘boring’.
Mr Patten sued for breach of contract and shortly afterwards received an unreserved
apology and an undisclosed financial settlement. He signed a new contract with
Macmillan – not a Murdoch company. The Daily Telegraph reported:
A joint statement issued by lawyers for both sides said: ‘It should be publicly recorded that
HarperCollins have unreservedly apologised for and withdrawn any suggestion that Chris Patten’s
book was rejected for not being up to proper professional standards or for being too “boring”.
They accept that these allegations are untrue and ought never to have been made’ . . .
An internal memo, disclosed by The Telegraph last week, made clear that the book was dropped
at Mr Murdoch’s instigation because of its ‘negative aspects’. It has been widely assumed that he
did not wish to compromise his satellite television interests in China by publishing trenchant
criticism of the regime in Beijing. (Daily Telegraph, 7 March 1998)
The story was also an embarrassment for the Murdoch-owned Times newspaper
which had not covered it. Raymond Snoddy, the media editor of the paper, had to
admit that the paper had made an unacceptable error in failing to report the row
over the book.
He said there had been no conspiracy and that he had not been ‘leant on’ to ignore the story that
HarperCollins, the publishing house owned by Mr Murdoch’s media group, abandoned plans to
publish the book because it criticised China. But Mr Snoddy, widely regarded as one of Britain’s
most authoritative media journalists, said that the lack of coverage had inevitably resulted in his
own reputation, and probably that of The Times, being damaged.
He told Radio 4’s Medium Wave programme that he believed it to be ‘completely obvious’ that
the decision to ditch the book stemmed from the threat to Mr Murdoch’s economic aspirations in
China. (Daily Telegraph, 2 March 1998)
Parliament and the law

A journalist should generally abide by the law and has a responsibility to Parliament
as the central law-making body. Parliament and the law, in theory at least, are the
representation of the will of the people in the society in which journalists live. Of
course this does not mean that journalists have to obey blindly. A healthy dose of
scepticism for those in power and the laws they make can ensure that lawmakers
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have always to justify what they do. But it does mean that journalists cannot behave
morally without due regard to the laws and standards of the society in which they
are working. Of course, this may mean different standards in different societies. For
instance, a female journalist working in a Muslim country might need to change her
Western style of dress to avoid offending the local people from whom she is
expecting to obtain stories. This is a moral issue in the sense that it is good pro-
fessional practice. It is much more difficult to get stories from shocked and outraged
interviewees than those who merely think you are a slightly eccentric foreigner.
Keeping a loyalty to the law and the society that makes it can present extra prob-
lems to a journalist. If, during the researching of a story, we come up with evidence
of a crime, should we provide the information to the police, even if it means
exposing a source or losing the story? A colleague had covered a run of stories about
a severely disabled little girl who had no arms and legs. The paper had campaigned
to raise money for her so he was shocked when covering court one day, to see her
father on trial for handling stolen goods. These were substantial, requiring fourteen
lock-up garages. The colleague had a dilemma. Should he run the story about the
man, making the link to the little girl, or should he spike the story? He decided to
submit copy and the editor used it. The reporter received death threats for his pains,
but his loyalty to the law meant he could not cover it up, and his loyalty to readers
and editor meant he was obliged to make the link between man and daughter in the
story.
Regulatory bodies
A regulatory body such as the Press Complaints Commission demands some loyalty,
even more so if the body is voluntary and self-regulatory, as is the PCC. If journal-
ists and editors ignored the PCC’s codes and its judgments, the PCC would become
an irrelevance. And as the PCC would be replaced by a statutory body, something
many journalists and editors would not welcome, there are also political reasons for
supporting it. The recent proposition that more people will take media complaints
to court rather than the PCC (see Case study 3.2) will naturally have important
implications.
Contacts
Journalists need to deal with their contacts as fairly as possible, telling them who
they are, what they intend to do and how they intend to do it. It is in the journalist’s
best interests to deal with contacts fairly. A contact who has been tricked will prob-
ably not speak to that journalist again. A journalist who abuses trust by printing lies
or half-truths is not dealing fairly with the contact and is not a ‘good’ journalist.
This is particularly true if the journalist has promised to keep the contact’s name
secret.
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Separation of publishing and journalism 63
Himself/herself
It is important that a journalist is loyal to him- or herself. If journalists are not clear
about their reasons and motives for handling stories in the way they do, then work
will eventually become very difficult. A journalist has personal desires and ambi-
tions, and often dependants to whom he or she also owes loyalty. Working long
hours, for instance, may well support the loyalty felt towards the editor and propri-
etor but would not be appreciated by a partner or children. The journalist’s loyalty
to self and family also extends to minimising danger. Covering dangerous assign-
ments may well show loyalty to the reader and editor, but shows little loyalty to self
and family. A journalist should ensure that work in war zones or other dangerous
places or work on stories that might carry risk of injury or death is carried out with
minimum risk. In some instances, this might mean refusing the assignment
altogether.
Other journalists
Most journalists feel some loyalty towards colleagues working for the same
employer. However, even journalists from other media or employers deserve some
level of loyalty, whether that is expressed through membership of a union such as
the National Union of Journalists, support for the NUJ’s Code of Conduct, or is a
more general sense of loyalty with members of the same profession.
Journalists work as a team, but in competition. They work with journalists for
their own paper or broadcasting station but will be in competition with journalists
from other outlets, or even, on occasions, from their own organisation. This means
they will often do things to mislead other journalists or put them off the scent of the
story. For instance, papers run what are known as ‘spoilers’ to ruin the circulation-
boosting effect of an opponent’s scoop. A journalist will rarely share information
with another journalist, whether it is a contact, a direct quote or another piece of
information. The exceptions are on a colleague-to-colleague basis in situations such
as press conferences or sports matches where a moment’s inattention can mean
missing what has happened. Journalists who know each other will then often help
each other out. Refusing to share information with a competitor is justifiable pro-
vided you do not expect help from them in the future.
Technology has helped change some of the more competitive aspects of journalism.
The days when fighting to get your hands on the only telephone was an important
part of the job have gone. Lines of communication remain very important to journal-
ists but, with the arrival of the mobile phone, it is no longer necessary to queue up to
phone copy over the only working public telephone within a ten-mile radius.
Separation of publishing and journalism
Journalists are not so directly driven by profit as newspaper proprietors and broad-
cast stations. They are, of course, concerned that the organisation they work for
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should continue to operate (as they do not want to lose their jobs) but as long as the
journalists feel they are providing their employer with stories that will interest
readers, and so continue to make their newspaper or broadcast station successful,
then they have fulfilled their function.
Newspaper proprietors and broadcasters are only really interested in the moral
aspect of the final product; the means of achieving it are of less importance.
Journalists’ decisions need to be made before this. They need to be aware of the
moral issues surrounding the stories they are pursuing and how they are pursuing
them. As discussed, by the time the story is published they may have already con-
sidered several different moral problems, starting with whether to cover the story at
all. Journalists need to consider the level of protection they can give to a source, the
veracity of the information they are being fed and how they would support that
information and how far they can morally go in gathering evidence. Only when they
have the story does the publisher become involved, yet this is often too late.
The early PCC Code of Practice concentrated largely on publication only. Whilst,
because it had been set up by journalists themselves, the NUJ Code saw the need to
control journalism and the way journalists behaved, the PCC Code, because it had
been established by editors and publishers, concentrated on what was published.
The changes that have been introduced since the Code was first written have tended
to dilute this concentration on publishing, with the emphasis turning towards news-
gathering. This process was speeded up by the death of the Princess of Wales and
the subsequent public outcry over her perceived hounding by the press. The
strengthened Code attempted to introduce more controls on the gathering of news
and this meant that more clauses needed to include the defence of the public interest.
Similarly the BBC Editorial Code and Ofcom’s code are about broadcasting gener-
ally and not all of it applies to journalism. These are codes for broadcasters covering
everything from product placement to children in shows. Consequently there are
elements that do not fully cover what journalists do. This is less so for the BBC who
have seventy years’ experience. The problem here, and it’s replicated by Ofcom, is
that the code is so long, that one only really uses it as a reference tool, when one is
certain there is already a moral dilemma.
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Chapter 5
TR UTH, AC C U RACY,
O BJ E CTIVITY AN D TR U ST
• The importance of truth-telling in journalism

• The difference and importance of truth and accuracy to the journalist
• Objectivity, balance and fairness
No matter what cynics may say, in the final analysis, journalism is about truth-
seeking. It is about presenting facts that have been properly researched and checked
and put together in an attempt to present readers or viewers with a coherent factual
story about an issue or event that will be of interest. This is not to suggest that every
story in every newspaper or every broadcast is absolutely true or even accurate.
Many stories contain elements that are wrong or made up for all sorts of reasons,
but it must be recognised that journalism is about presenting facts and that anything
in a newspaper or broadcast that is not factual is not journalism, although it may
well be entertainment masquerading as journalism.
Journalism and the media that carries it will only be trusted by consumers if it is
consistently truthful. A newspaper or broadcaster which produces factual errors, or
misleads and does not correct the mistake as soon as possible will gradually lose the
trust of consumers. A media brand that is not trusted might still sell, because its
material is seen as entertaining, but it will only ever attract a smaller audience
seeking pure entertainment.
There are two main reasons why the journalism presented in a newspaper or
broadcast might not be truthful: pressure of time or resources can limit a journalist’s
ability to get to the story and a desire to increase readership can make it very
tempting to present a story that is interesting, but not actually accurate or truthful.
Both of these are serious problems, not only because individual journalists are faced
with these dilemmas the whole time, but also because these are institutionalised
problems. News organisations are businesses and the pursuit of greater profit leads
organisations to cut costs, reducing resources and making it more likely that the
reduced number of journalists will not have sufficient resources to follow up stories
appropriately. Inevitably, editors keen to increase circulation will then be more
receptive to stories that interest readers and will be likely to attract sales even if
these stories are not entirely truthful. Of course, in order to minimise potential
embarrassment, many of these stories are not about serious issues or events that
could be quickly sourced and denied but are interesting stories about people in
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66 5 • Truth, accuracy, objectivity and trust
places that are not easy to trace, or concern events that are difficult to deny, of
which the ‘World War Two bomber on the moon’ story in an early edition of the
Sunday Sport is an extreme example.
The truth is a difficult concept to pin down but nearly all commentators agree
that the search for it is one of the main purposes of journalism. The popular TV
show The X Files claimed ‘the truth is out there’ which implied that it existed, but
that it was not something that any one person possessed. Truth by its nature is frag-
mented and it is unlikely that any one us will ever see the whole Truth.
Those who believe in God consider him to be a major part of the truth, but athe-
ists are not in a position to accuse believers of lying, merely that they are wrong or
mistaken. Atheists do not believe, but have no evidence to support their viewpoint,
any more than those who believe are able to show concrete evidence in favour of a
deity, although there is plenty of evidence to show that religion exists.
It is probably the moral nature of truth that should concern us here rather than
the metaphysical sense. We can all understand the meaning of truth when it comes
to telling the truth rather than lying and it is this level of truth that most people
want from journalists.
Morality and truth
Journalists develop the truth by examining evidence from a variety of sources,

testing it, checking it and then putting together copy using those sources. All of this
is done to tight deadlines with limited resources and a constant temptation to cut
corners; to take someone’s word for it or to believe what a source says without
checking against another source.
The quality of information offered to consumers is inevitably as variable as the
sources from which it comes and so a major part of a journalist’s work in gathering
material for publication or broadcast from a news source is to determine how reli-
able this information is. This can be done by testing the information against known
facts or other sources. If the information is known to be totally accurate, for
instance, the journalist actually saw a politician crash his car into a wall, then that
is an accurate fact that can be reported. But, when information comes from another
source that is not so reliable, and which cannot be confirmed from sources that are
more reliable, the journalist has to make an assessment about whether to pass this
information on to the consumer. Should he or she report claims that the young
woman seen fleeing from the politician’s car was a prostitute? Should the report
mention that the politician had allegedly been drinking at a party shortly before the
accident? The reliability of sources as well as the reliability of their evidence should
both be checked. The BBC is in no doubt
Our output must be well sourced, based on sound evidence, thoroughly tested and presented in
clear, precise language. We should be honest and open about what we don’t know and avoid
unfounded speculation. For the BBC accuracy is more important than speed and it is often more
than a question of getting the facts right. All the relevant facts and information should be weighed
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Morality and truth 67
to get at the truth. If an issue is controversial, relevant opinions as well as facts may need to be
considered. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/accuracy/index.shtml
(accessed 14/7/06))
John Hartley makes the point that ‘The way news “maps” the world and pro-
duces our sense of its reality depends very largely on the nature of the various signs
it uses’ (1982: 15). It is important, therefore, that the journalist handles information
from an untrustworthy or unreliable news source carefully if the consumer is not to
be inadvertently misled. In this sense ‘unreliable’ means news sources which provide
inaccurate or misleading information, information which is biased, or which present
comment and propaganda as fact. Unfortunately, virtually all news sources, by their
very nature, provide information that is distorted, either because of pressure of time
or resources or because of a deliberate desire to deceive. This why it is so important
to check one source against another. Politicians will always want to suggest that
their ideas are right or that their opponents are wrong. Does this mean they tell lies?
It depends on the individual. Very few people, and politicians are no exception, tell
the whole truth all of the time. Sometimes we will lie to protect a friend or relative.
At other times, our view of an incident will be coloured by our own best interests.
On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine someone (politician or not) who could
lie the whole of the time without being detected very quickly. If consumers are to be
able to identify which politicians are lying (or at least putting a favourable gloss on
the truth) at any given time, they need to be able to test the information they are fed
by the journalist to analyse critically the words of the politician.
Journalists have to take the middle ground when dealing with people. They
should be sceptical about everyone, seeing them as neither good nor bad but merely
human. This does not mean that a journalist has no duty to follow up information
that shows a person to be lying. Quite the reverse. It means listening and watching
carefully, picking up on the small signs that can help show someone has something
to hide, and listening for inconsistencies and refusing to believe at face value what
they are told. People do not tend to lie outright. It is too easy to be found out.
Rather they use sentence forms that can have several meanings. They evade the
questions. They twist and turn in the hope that the journalist will not notice. For
instance, the question ‘Did you take a bribe for £100,000?’ might elicit the response
‘£100,000? Of course not, my dear fellow. Would I still be sitting around London
with that kind of holiday money in my bank account?’ This straightforward denial
of the charge stands up to little sceptical scrutiny. Assuming the speaker is telling
the absolute truth, and we have no way of checking that, the only things we know
for sure are that the speaker is in London and that any bribe he received was prob-
ably not for £100,000. We can guess that any bribe taken was for less, otherwise he
would, by his own admission, be on holiday. Clearly, we need to ask further ques-
tions. It is for this reason that Jeremy Paxman is considered to be a good
interviewer: he is not afraid to keep asking the same question until he either gets an
answer or it becomes clear that the politician is unable to answer truthfully and the
viewer can make their own mind up about what that might mean.
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Truth and accuracy
Sources of information are often not as accurate or as certain as we might like. A

police chief dealing with a major incident may issue information to journalists
which has not been checked and therefore could be inaccurate. Because he or she
wants to show the media that he or she is doing a good job the information is
released before it is ready. Those in authority learn very quickly that the nature of
news means that a story is soon forgotten, taking false or misleading statements
with it into oblivion. Everybody in the news wants to show themselves in a good
light and so are likely to distort the story in some way, even if unconsciously. Again
the journalist must use his or her judgement to try to spot the leaps of faith by the
source of information and put them in the right context.
The case of the Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead by the
Metropolitan police in the mistaken belief he was a terrorist is a prime example of
this. At the time the police issued statements leading journalists to believe that the
police had no option but to shoot to kill but in later inquiries it became clear that
this was inaccurate and that police chief Sir Ian Blair had known it was wrong
within hours of the shooting:
witnesses, who were inside Scotland Yard’s headquarters on July 22, have told the IPCC that on
the day of the shooting planning and discussion took place based on the assumption that an
innocent man had been killed. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,1726676,00.html
accessed 14/7/06)
Although the need to be aware about the accuracy of information has been
stressed, we should not assume that all outlets claiming to issue news actually do so
or that their customers are unhappy about the poor quality of information supplied.
Consumers are often willing to be told stories that are amazing, funny, surprising
and just plain entertaining, even if they don’t always believe them to be true. There
are many publications around the world that carry such stories. The People of 6
October 1996 carried the story ‘Elvis is alive’ on its front page. The Weekly World
News, published in the USA but with an international circulation, is always full of
unbelievable tales such as ‘Couple with 8-inch tongues marry!’, complete with pic-
tures (Weekly World News, 14 June 1994: 1). Furthermore, consider urban myths.
These are stories that are usually spread by word of mouth, although they some-
times make it into the media. The internet has fed their popularity and they are now
spreading further and faster than ever. The events are usually described by the teller
as happening to a friend, although if pressed they will usually admit to it being the
friend of a friend, often several times removed. Urban myths are almost impossible
to trace back to their origins and seem to be complete fabrications, yet people enjoy
hearing them, hence their popularity on the World Wide Web.
If a media outlet is just aiming to entertain readers in this way, then it does not
need to provide accurate information because that is not what its market wants.
People buy it to be entertained, not for accurate information. Most people, however,
buy into information systems because they want high-grade information, not just
entertainment, and any media outlet that claims to be an information provider and
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Truth and accuracy 69
wishes to maintain its market would do well to justify the veracity of its sources.
Any product that does not supply what its market requires, in this case accurate
information, is soon going to go out of business. This does not mean the media
never deals in inaccurate information. One of the prevailing dilemmas for the jour-
nalist is whether to publish stories of the ‘Rumours have been denied . . .’ sort.
Publishing such a story gives it credence, but sometimes the rumour is already
widely known and believed and so requires the record being set straight.
Very often consumers need and want to know about information that cannot
be easily verified as being truthful. Much political reporting is of this sort. If, for
example, one politician says that poor teaching is responsible for our children
being ill-educated, while another says it is a lack of resources and a third says our
children are actually the best educated in the world, it would not be surprising if
a journalist reported this story as a row between politicians, only briefly men-
tioning their points of view. The only thing we can be certain is true is the row.
The rest lies in the field of opinion, usually based on untested facts and one-sided
statistics. It would be foolish, and indeed dangerous, for journalists to pretend
that they can provide enough accurate information for the consumer to come to
a firm conclusion. It is important, however, that we know that a debate about
education has been started. If the Secretary of State for Education then becomes
involved in the debate, making a 30-minute speech on how out-dated teaching
methods are responsible for past failures in the education system in the UK and
that new ideas are to be introduced, we can report that as the minister’s view. No
journalist is going to be able to devote the time and resources required to track
down in detail all the theories and see whether the academic literature bears out
the Education Secretary’s view, but journalists can approach educational experts
and political opponents for their views as well as looking for obvious inconsisten-
cies in the speech, and use those as the basis of the story. In other words, a good
story would be about the new methods of education, why the Secretary of State
is intending to introduce them and why old methods have been used for so many
years possibly ignoring the advice of the experts. Whilst it would be accurate to
report just the Secretary of State’s speech, it would not be entirely truthful to
report only that. A journalist has a duty to set such a report in context for the
consumer.
Accuracy is a word that causes more confusion in journalism than anything else.
People expect the media to be accurate so that they can reassure themselves that
their model of the universe, formed in part by the information the media feeds them,
is accurate. Yet a considerable measure of that universal model will be formed from
information that is not accurate or even truthful. Each person’s model of the uni-
verse will be built around presumptions, assumptions and information that is either
wrong or is at least unproved. While consumers seek accuracy, there are other cri-
teria which are just as important. There is no point in a reporter being absolutely
accurate six months after the event because this would entail sacrificing timeliness
to accuracy. The journalist must do all he or she can to minimise mistakes, distor-
tions and untruthfulness but he or she must also be aware that time is an important
component of this type of information-gathering (see Exhibit 5.1).
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Exhibit 5.1 Time and accuracy

I learn, from a radio report, that the road I usually take to drive home from work is
blocked because, police have reported, a lorry has shed its load. I am naturally
interested in this news and listen closely to gather all the information that I can. I learn
that the load is unlikely to be cleared for several hours and therefore the road will
remain blocked. On the basis of this information I might decide to take a different route
home or, if this were not possible or considered inadvisable, I might decide to stay
where I am and work late. Either way, it would not worry me if I later learned that in
fact the road was blocked because a car had broken down (unless of course the updated
information meant that the road was cleared much faster than would have been the case
if the original story had been correct, so invalidating my decision process). Since my
purpose in having the information is to use it as the basis for a decision to take a detour
before being caught in the traffic jam, it does not matter much that the reason for
blockage is not fully accurate.
Because of the way we treat information, not only do we occasionally accept inaccu-
rate information, we actually need it. Making mistakes can be an important part of
news reporting. Whilst news media should aim to produce truthful information, it is as
important that they get the information out quickly. Accurate information too late is of
little value in news terms. For example, a journalist covering a train crash is told by the
police chief that there are 60 people dead but the ambulance chief says 58, whilst the
hospital says the number is 59. What should the journalist report? That a number of
people were killed, or should he or she choose one of the numbers and try to confirm
which is right later on? Of course it might be weeks before the final death toll was
determined. Most consumers I suspect would prefer to know the approximate number
rather than wonder what range ‘a number of deaths’ came into.
If we look at information-gathering from a Kantian viewpoint (see Chapter 1),

the problem arises about how to draw up a universal law. It is clear from the above
discussion that it would not be helpful or usefully attainable to propose that all
information passed on by journalists should be accurate. The National Union of
Journalists’ Code of Conduct asks a journalist to ‘strive to ensure material is accu-
rate’, but this leaves a problem: how hard should the journalist strive? If we
exchange accuracy for truthfulness, we eradicate these problems. ‘A journalist
should always report truthfully’ allows the journalist to report potentially inaccurate
or untruthful information providing he or she ensures that the consumer is able to
make a judgement about how reliable the information is. If the journalist has taken
every care to ensure that the information is as truthful as possible and is properly
sourced so that the reader is able to decide how far they can trust the information,
the journalist has surely dealt with the consumer fairly, even if the consumer’s hope
for completely accurate information has not been fulfilled. Furthermore, the jour-
nalist ought not to stop at only providing information from sources which are in
themselves accurate, but he or she should also seek to put that information in the
context of the wider truth. One can be accurate just by making a couple of tele-
phone calls, but finding and presenting the truth often takes a lot more effort.
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Readers expect that the information they are being fed is properly sourced, so
journalists have a moral obligation, if they are unable to guarantee accuracy of
information (although they do have an obligation to do their best to ensure accu-
racy), to at least ensure the reader or viewer is made aware of the source of any story
and therefore the part it plays in the truth of the story. The process of belief/non-
belief of the source (and therefore the information) lies with the consumer. It is the
journalist’s job to give them the information they need to make a rational decision,
not to take that decision for the consumer. Accuracy can be seen as a market com-
modity. Any media claiming to sell information should ensure that it is accurate so
that its customers return for more. But truth is a deeper ethical commitment which
goes beyond the strict commercial contract between supplier and consumer. A good
newspaper executive will want to ensure accuracy in order to continue selling
papers; a good journalist will want to tell the truth in order to do what’s right by
the consumer.
Tom Koch, in News as Myth (1990), gives the example of a Hawaiian judge
(Shintaku) who brought in a verdict which was unpopular with the authorities. He
was later rushed to hospital with injuries gained in mysterious circumstances. It
suited the authorities to ascribe these to an attempt at suicide even though the evi-
dence for this was skimpy. Press reporting at the time seemed to support this
conclusion by reporting only what the authorities said:
Reportage of the Shintaku case was based on the generally accepted journalistic assumption that
attributed fact is sufficient. Editorial judgement is for the op-ed page while reporters need not and
should not judge the statements of those they are sent to cover. For Samuel Johnson, however, it
was precisely here that the hack showed his or her skill, probing on the basis of prior experience
the limits of a single event’s description. . . . The issue these cases raise is the efficacy of an
institutionalised set of journalistic practices which presumably guarantees veracity but ultimately
leads . . . to the reportage of incomplete, misleading, ‘false truths’. (Koch 1990: 9)
Journalists in this case were able to report accurately but not truthfully.
Gainsaying the official verdict would have been difficult but the journalists should
have attempted to show the consumer that whilst they had accurately reported what
official sources had said, there was good reason to doubt the veracity of those
sources.
Truth and objectivity
Objectivity is another value that, it seems, is highly prized and desired by consumers
and journalists. Consumers often complain that journalists are not impartial or
objective, while many journalists are convinced not only that they should be objec-
tive, but also that they are objective.
The debate about objectivity is still very much alive amongst journalists and aca-
demics. There are those who say journalists should be objective: Matthew Kieran
for instance, supports this view very strongly. Others are confident that objectivity
is impossible and some even believe it is not desirable. Part of this debate is in
JOUR_C05.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 72
semantics: it is all about the words we use. Objectivity has taken on an almost myth-
ical status for journalists over the past century. Many journalists have been known
to become upset when their professional objectivity has been questioned.
The BBC’s charter and the various broadcasting laws require impartiality from
broadcasters, but the Press Complaints Commission has always been happy for
newspapers to be partial, provided they make a distinction between fact and
comment. Even the NUJ believes journalists can comment provided it is made clear
when this is being done. Because our choice of words is important when working in
this important yet delicate area, you should look at Exhibit 5.2 for a definition of
some of the terms used and to identify how I will use them in this discussion. These
terms are often used interchangeably, but they are quite distinct in their meaning
and unless they are used appropriately, the debate will continue to rage.
Exhibit 5.2 Impartiality and objectivity

Bias or slant. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary (1964) describes bias as prejudice.
Its origin is from the game of bowls where the lop-sided construction of the ball gives
bias – a twist in the path it follows. Bias, as used in this book, means the deliberate
slanting of a story to favour one side of the argument rather than another on the
grounds of the personal choice of the writer.
Balance. The idea that the journalist can and should present equally two sides of an
argument.
Comment. An explanatory remark or criticism. ‘Comment’ in journalistic terms can
range from the expert opinion of a correspondent to the unwarranted insertion of
unsupported views.
Objectivity. The most contentious description. That which is objective cannot and
should not contain that which is subjective. This is often taken to mean that a journalist
should not allow his or her feelings and beliefs intrude into the article.
Neutral or impartial. Taking neither side. This does not exclude subjectivity but
necessitates that the journalist stands aloof from any decision-making.
Prejudice. A preconceived opinion. This differs from bias in that bias may slant a story
without there being a preconceived idea. Prejudice is more likely to determine what
information is gathered for a story while bias is more likely to determine how it is
written and used.
Fairness. The idea that the journalist gives all sides of the argument a fair hearing.
Having drawn up some definitions, we now need to take this further and identify
which of these are important to journalists. There are several concepts involved. We
must consider whether:
• There is such a thing as objectivity in the abstract;
• This objectivity is necessarily linked to truth and the truth is capable of being
reported objectively in a theoretical sense;
JOUR_C05.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 73
• The truth is capable of being reported objectively in practice;

• Consumers actually want objectivity in any case.
The trouble with using a word like ‘objectivity’ is that it is always linked
somehow to the concept of truth. The positivist views of the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries have left us a legacy that suggest that if only we stand far enough
back from something and try to rid ourselves of all preconceived ideas or prejudices,
we will find it much easier to see the truth and that we will be able to see it objec-
tively. This has served us well in the approaches to science and technology, allowing
us to understand the physical world much better, but it does not serve so well when
it comes to understanding the world of relationships and behaviour. Part of the
reason for this is that our understanding of physical things can be described in terms
that externalise it, make it part of the world outside us. Many of the things we are
most interested in, in terms of news, however, have a large internal component. It
would be very difficult to report on the latest Big Brother TV series, without taking
into account the views that consumers might have of it. Reporting of the goings-on
will be handled very differently by the quality papers who are writing for an audi-
ence that would be far more disdainful of the series (or at least would want to give
that impression) than the readers of some of the tabloid papers. The truth about the
Big Brother TV series is different from one reader to another, influenced by their
internal view of the TV series and its impact on society at large. All news reports
might be giving information about who the latest person to be evicted from the
house is, but the reports would be very different from each other even though all
would be truthful. This surely means that none are objective, since they are written
from the subjective viewpoint of the reporter and include a subjective understanding
of what the audience requires. This is, however, very different from suggesting there
is a bias or deliberate attempt to slant the reporting in a particular way. The
reporters for the various papers have probably all attempted to present their readers
with the truth, and they have attempted to do so without bias, but they have not
done so objectively because they will have ensured the story fits the subjective truth
that their paper and its readers largely share. They will also not have been able to
put sufficient distance between themselves and the subjects of the story in order to
achieve that level of objectivity. Journalists do not have enough time or space in
which to distance themselves.
To give another example: most people are able to identify colours, but it is reason-
ably clear that we do not all perceive them in the same way. Generally we all
understand the term ‘green’ and would all identify well-watered, healthy grass as
green. But as the colour green edges towards blue, it is clear that there are different
opinions and some people identify that colour as blue and some identify it as green.
The truth about that particular colour’s identity is subjective, despite it being a fixed
wavelength of light that can be scientifically measured and identified. Our eyes can be
deceived by the light reflected from elsewhere onto the colour and our own internal
perception of that colour. Of course our own like or dislike of a particular colour can
also affect the way we view it and so as human beings, our understanding of colour
is far more than a scientific measure of its wavelength. Fashion, our development, our
JOUR_C05.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 74
previous interactions with colour and the ability of our eyes to distinguish a greater
or lesser range of colour is going to affect our view of the truth of colour.
We can now look at how a similar process affects our interaction with jour-
nalism. ‘There are words in English printed on this page’ is a statement that is
unlikely to cause a reaction more significant than a cautious nod of the head. There
seems little cause for argument. There is a page, there are words; those who read
English will recognise those words and that their use is consistent with English
grammar and usage. The words now stand for themselves, and your ability to
understand what the words appear to represent could arguably be said to be
truthful, and even objective. But the purpose of putting words on a page is not to
present a textual design. It is to communicate a message and it is here that objec-
tivity breaks down. My involvement in the message and the processes involved in
your understanding of it means that the message contained in the words is entirely
subjective. The truth of the message, assuming there to be one, has changed by being
understood by you. But this is to ignore the physical evidence of the page and the
print that can also be seen by others, even if they interpret the same message in a
different way. In other words, the issue is whether there is any objectiveness in my
meaning of the words, your understanding of the words or only in the imprint of
the words themselves on the page.
We can say pragmatically, and with evidence, that the page exists. We can prove
to other people that the page exists by showing it to them. However, that is the last
objective truth we can show them. You cannot prove that the meaning you take
from this page and these words is the same as the meaning I intended to give them
or the same as the understanding someone else has. I hope that those understand-
ings will be very similar, otherwise I have failed in my task as a communicator of
ideas, but I would be foolish to think that I would have been able to transfer exact
and identical understandings of a complex issue through anything I could write. I
can only help present a perspective that would allow you to come to a closer under-
standing of how I view what is happening.
Truth and impartiality
Many people have claimed that the good journalist should hold up a mirror to the world
to allow the viewer to see things as they really are. But it can be argued that this advice
has two flaws. First, none of us sees things in mirrors as they really are. We view ourselves
according to our own prejudices; some will see a gorgeous creature smiling back, whilst
those with lower self-esteem may see a less appealing reflection. More importantly, the
mirror argument also makes the assumption that the reporter adds no distortions or
unconscious changes to the image in the mirror. This is unlikely. Journalists may not
deliberately remove a wart or minimise the grey hair, as some painters may, but they
inevitably concentrate on one feature more than another, or they may even deliberately
choose to minimise a feature which might otherwise add unnecessary confusion.
Matthew Kieran criticises the view that objectivity is not possible, saying it has
become ‘increasingly fashionable, within cultural, media and even journalistic
JOUR_C05.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 75
circles, to dismiss claims concerning objectivity’ (Kieran 1998: 23). He goes on to

argue for impartiality, concatenating it with objectivity.
Good journalism aims at discovering and promoting the audience’s understanding of an event via
truth-promoting methods. This is indeed why impartiality is important. For a journalist must aim
to be impartial in his considered judgements as to the appropriate assessment of particular events,
agents’ intentions, why they came about and their actual or potential significance. A failure of
impartiality in journalism is a failure to respect one of the methods required in order to fulfil the
goal of good journalism: getting to the truth of the matter. (Kieran 1998: 34)
He talks about objectivity in news-reporting almost as an alternative word for

impartiality. But the two are very different. Certainly a journalist who aims at the
truth, and most commentators are agreed that this is what should be happening,
should attempt to be impartial. A good journalist should not be attempting to
present one side as being more important than another. But I hope such a journalist
would not be so deluded as to assume that this means they would, or even could, be
objective.
Hartley used Lewis’ map analogy to explain his ideas about the interpretation of
truth and meaning: ‘A map organises, selects and renders coherent the innumerable
sense impressions we might experience on the ground. It does not depict the land. .
. . Clearly a map is an abstraction from reality . . .’ (Hartley 1982: 15). A totally
objective map would be so large as to cover the country it purported to map,
inserting every feature to be found in the real thing and so becoming indistinguish-
able from the real thing. In order to be used as a map, it must reduce the detail and
thus interpretation is needed. A road map of the UK may well be entirely truthful
and useful to road users, but it would be of little value to someone walking in the
Lake District where roads are sparse. The truth in any map is subjective because it
is based on a decision-making process rationally reached by the map-maker to
provide a useful map for a certain section of map users.
Like the map-maker, the journalist is never in the position of being able to
present the whole picture. If a journalist is covering a plane crash, how much detail
would he or she need to know about plane manufacture, safety-testing procedures,
production of aviation fuel, airport procedures, the private lives of passengers and
crew members, the method of training pilots, and so on? The journalist has to draw
a line somewhere or no copy would ever be filed. The instant a journalist decides
that he or she has enough information to file a story, objectivity is out of the
window; the editing process has begun and subjectivity is in. But that should not
mean that impartiality goes out of the window as well, for that would mean the
journalist abandoning the search for truth. There is a world of difference between
looking for the truth and expecting to find it. Looking for the truth requires impar-
tiality, reporting requires acknowledging you have failed to find it.
With newspapers and broadcast stations perpetually short of space, with time pressing
on the reporter and the importance of getting the story as quickly as possible, there are a
range of physical and practical problems which will prevent objective reporting.
Reporters have to decide to whom they will speak and editors have to select what to
publish in order to make deadlines and produce newspapers and news programmes.
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Does the argument that objectivity is probably not possible mean that we should
not pursue it? After all, the whole truth is probably never possible, or only in a
limited way, but we still pursue that. There are some very good reasons why even
the pursuit of objectivity (as opposed to impartiality, balance or fairness) is not
desirable. Objectivity is often seen as standing well back from the problem – taking
the man-from-Mars approach, working as though the reporter were an anthropol-
ogist reporting on a strange and unknown tribe. But this is not what reporting is
about. It is detailed reporting of day-to-day events by people deeply involved, expert
even, in that society and culture to people who are also members of that culture.
Theodore L. Glasser offers some insight into the practical problems of the pursuit
of objectivity by journalists. He believes that:
Objectivity in journalism is biased in favour of the status quo; . . . against independent thinking; it
emasculates the intellect by treating it as a disinterested spectator. Finally objective reporting is
biased against the very idea of responsibility; the day’s news is viewed as something journalists are
compelled to report, not something they are responsible for creating. . . . Objectivity in journalism
effectively erodes the very foundation on which rests a responsible Press. (Glasser 1992: 176)
Martin Bell puts a similar case from the viewpoint of a highly experienced prac-
tising journalist:
I am no longer sure about the notion of objectivity, which seems to me to be something of an
illusion and a shibboleth. When I have reported from the war zones, or anywhere else, I have done
so with all the fairness and impartiality I could muster, and a scrupulous attention to the facts, but
using my eyes and ears and mind and accumulated experience, which are surely the very essence of
the subjective. (Bell 1998: 16)
From these standpoints it seems likely that even an attempt at balance, to put
‘both sides’ of the argument may limit the journalist’s ability to attempt the truth.
Many viewpoints may legitimately shed light on a story whether this is a political
party, a campaign group, people involved in the dilemma, those with experience of
similar past events, and so on. How is a journalist to evaluate who is best to speak
on an issue and who will offer what evidence?
We also need to ask ourselves whether objectivity is what the consumer wants. I
am confident that the consumer wants the media to have made selections both in
what stories are used and how they are used. Taking the above into account, it
seems clear that anyone seeking objective reporting in practice has four areas of
concern:
1. The pursuit of objectivity is biased in favour of the status quo.
2. The pursuit of objective reporting is biased against independent thinking.
3. The pursuit of objective reporting is biased against responsible reporting.
4. Objective reporting by its very nature is almost impossible and is in any case
undesirable.
Let us look at why this is the case. First, the pursuit of objectivity is biased in
favour of the status quo, such as the courts and public authorities, because that is
where reporters inevitably tend to go when seeking stories (see ‘logistics’ in Exhibit
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2.1). However, if we only give the views of the court and Parliament, for instance,
as being the objective truth, we only represent society from one point of view. It is
a common failing of much reporting that only establishment or elite sources are
used.
Secondly, often this very limitation on the use of sources is seen as somehow
being objective. The very act of attempting to be impartial leads some journalists to
limit independent thinking for fear that using unusual sources or contacts would be
seen as abandoning impartiality. How can a journalist use creative intellect to
advance a story, make unusual connections or talk to different people to widen their
readers’ view of a topic and still remain objective? Surely this is just an admission
that there is a wider story and that no one could ever get to cover it all. But the
reporter who strives to be impartial and pursue the evidence of truth wherever it is
to be found while understanding this does not open the box to total and objective
truth, is bound to provide a wider truth. Martin Bell, perhaps one of the most suc-
cessful and certainly best-respected journalists of his generation, says:
it is my experience that the campaigners and crusaders tend to find what they are looking for,
ignoring inconvenient evidence to the contrary and the unstructured complexity of what is actually
out there. Rather I have found it useful to do the opposite and seek out the unfavoured spokesmen
of unpopular causes, whether the Afrikaners of South Africa, the loyalist paramilitaries in Northern
Ireland, or the Serbs in Bosnia; they will often hold the key to a conflict and its possible resolution.
(Bell 1998: 16)
Thirdly, if a journalist is able to say ‘it’s not my fault, I have to report this story
because my obligation is to provide impartial or objective reports’, it can give a mis-
leading impression to the consumer. It is quite common for a statement made by a
person or group to be used as the basis for a story, despite the reporter knowing or
suspecting that the information is misleading or even untrue. Many journalists do
not want to risk destroying a good story by discrediting the statement, but will use
it on the grounds that it is a fact that the words were said ‘by a spokesman’, even if
they are untrue.
Finally, trying to be objective is undesirable in that it tends to lull the reporter into
writing only about what is immediately observable, using traditional and well-tested
sources which are themselves supposed to be objective. When reporting a council
meeting, for instance, one might think that by taking the argument for the motion,
together with an argument against and the officer’s briefing speech, and adding to it the
outcome of the vote, this would result in a rounded impartial report. But of course this
may not be the case. What if one of the speakers was mistaken, lying or simply speaking
about the wrong agenda item? What if the officer’s briefing was misleading because he
or she was incompetent or corrupt? The article might well be objective about the
debate, but it would be woefully inaccurate and misleading about the issue. It might
also miss two or three much better stories that might have emerged if the reporter had
been more concerned with presenting a full picture to the reader than an objective one.
There is also the view that objectivity is not even that desirable. Martin Bell talks
of the journalism of attachment. This is not, he says, the same as campaigning or
crusading journalism:
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By this I mean a journalism that cares as well as knows; that is aware of its responsibilities; that
will not stand neutrally between good and evil, right and wrong, the victim and the oppressor. This
is not to back one side or faction or people against another. It is to make the point that we in the
press, and especially in television, which is its most powerful division, do not stand apart from the
world. We are part of it. We exercise a certain influence, and we know that. The influence may be
for better or for worse and we have to know that too. (Bell 1998: 16)
Bearing in mind the duty to the reader to present truthful information, then, a
journalist should endeavour to be fair (and therefore impartial in the sense of not
taking sides) in his or her reporting, presenting to the reader a fair representation of
what has happened, who said what, putting it into context and, where possible, a
context of what is true, what is reliable and what is not. For instance, if a group
called Smokers for Health existed and issued a press release saying that latest
research, paid for by the group and carried out in their own laboratories, shows
smoking not only to be safe, but also positively beneficial to health, then objective
reporting might require the publishing of this amazing revelation. A reporter deter-
mined to be fair and to present truthful information to the reader might dig a bit
deeper, carry the same story but with additional information. He or she would add
that Smokers for Health is funded by a cigarette manufacturer and carried out its
research in an impoverished part of the world, paying its ‘guinea pigs’ with
resources such as food and water that were unavailable to the rest of the local popu-
lation, and then leave the reader to decide why the survival rate for smokers was
better.
Balance and impartiality
While considering impartiality and objectivity we need to consider balance. Is this

the same as impartiality (see Exhibit 5.2)? Journalists and the public often assume
this to mean balance between the political parties, whether this is as simple as pro-
viding 30 seconds’ coverage to each party, 100 words to all sides, or something a
little more sophisticated in terms of balancing over a period of time, an election
campaign for instance. The broadcasting laws in Britain require news and current
affairs to provide a balance between parties or candidates over the period of an elec-
tion: each candidate in a particular constituency (local or national) should receive
about the same amount of air time.
For the most part, balance is difficult to achieve. This is the notion that both (or
more) sides should have equal time and equal space to put their arguments. This
balance, or fairness, is fine when two sides of the political divide are explaining their
policies and the defects of their opponents’ policies. But are we really suggesting, in
an article or report about child abuse, that for every social worker or police officer
talking about the problem, we would have a child abuser extolling its virtues? If a
journalist is reporting on a story that focuses on good and evil, should both sides
get an equal share of neutral reporting? Searching for the truth would certainly
involve a good journalist talking to paedophiles or organisations supporting pae-
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Sensationalism 79
dophiles, if such exist. Only by discovering the views of those so deeply concerned
with the problem can we start to understand it. But I don’t think anyone would
suggest that the paedophiles’ views should be put to balance the views of those who
condemn paedophilia – only to help explain them.
Balance is not a juggling act between establishment sources. Whilst all the main-
stream political parties are debating an issue from one point of view, is it either
sensible or impartial only to cover those views? If all the major parties are in debate
about the minutiae of a Terrorism Bill, is impartiality about giving the different
parties’ views or is it about finding those who oppose the Bill altogether as well?
Clearly, journalists need a wider concept than impartiality or neutrality in order to
be fair to the consumers and to all those involved in the argument. Fairness, honesty
and justice are required because these are the only concepts that allow journalists to
look up to higher ideals than something as drab and unhelpful as objectivity.
Objectivity, even impartiality maybe, requires diffidence, dispassion, an ability to
step outside the society in which we live. Even if this were possible for a journalist,
would anyone be interested in listening to or reading his or her reports?
Sensationalism
An avoidance of sensationalism is often given as the reason for the pursuit of truth
and objectivity in reporting. As we have seen before, newsworthiness is, partly at
least, about material that will sell a newspaper or broadcast to people seeking infor-
mation. Following on from that, we need to consider why it seems that many
journalists cannot bring information of an event to the consumer accurately and
devoid of sensation.
There is little sensationalism in ordinary stories of the sort that usually fill our
newspapers and the stories are generally accurate (within the limits that can be
explained by tight deadlines and the explanation of topicality as a major criterion
of the news judgement). If the information is easy to obtain, is detailed and the
sources are credible, then there is little chance of the story becoming sensational.
Journalists can supply all the information the consumer requires without stepping
outside the wealth of accurate information easily available to them. However, with
a big story things are different. Big changes, or matters that give people consider-
able anxiety about their security, raise the desire for information. People will take
as much information as news outlets can give them. A big story will bring a height-
ened desire for news and the information requirement of the average consumer can
soar. Additional consumers can also be drawn in. People who ordinarily do not buy
newspapers suddenly start doing so in order to find out more.
If formal news sources are unable to provide enough information to satisfy con-
sumers, then there is no way newspapers involved in a vicious circulation war are
going to let that stop them making the most of their ability to capture consumers.
People are prepared to pay for information whether the paper has it or not.
Newspapers may well carry stories from dubious, informal sources, knowing that
the information is not well sourced, in order to provide enough copy for the
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consumer. If reliable sources, authorities such as the police or other emergency serv-
ices, are not able or are unwilling to give information, this is not an excuse that a
newsdesk, determined to fill a special edition, is likely to accept. Reporters will be
obliged to use less reliable sources, witnesses whose motives in giving evidence may
be less honest. Where there is an absence of reliable information, rumour quickly
develops and this may make it into the paper. Classic cases include the reporting of
the death of Princes Diana. Early reports claimed that the speed of her car jammed
at 120 mph (Daily Mail, 2/9/97 page 8). This was completely untrue, according to
the later police reports and also defies logic, as it is impossibly fast in an urban area,
even on a motorway. It’s possible that this mistake developed out of a reporter for-
getting that speeds in France would be measured in kph: 120 kph being much closer
to the speed the police finally reported.
This happens less often in broadcasting as the generally fixed length of news bul-
letins reduces the opportunity to use additional material. However, a story such as
the 7/7 bombings, the 9/11 attacks or the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, can
change even that. Bulletins were extended to cover the London terrorist attacks and
the attacks on the twin towers, while the Princess’s death and funeral received
massive coverage from newspapers and broadcasters, even when there was nothing
more to add.
Case study 5.1 The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in August 1997 shocked the world and her
funeral received massive coverage from both newspapers and broadcasters. The cov-
erage continued even when there seemed to be nothing more to add.
The funeral took place on Saturday 6 September and broadcasters felt obliged to
broadcast all afternoon, long after the funeral had ended, forcing them to show repeats
of selected items from the funeral, footage of the funeral cortege on the motorway, and
interminable interviews with various pundits. None of this added any new information,
yet broadcasters felt it necessary to carry on and viewers felt obliged to stay with the
coverage.
On the following Monday the newspapers were full of pictures and reports of the
funeral, despite the massive live viewing figures on the Saturday and extensive coverage
by the Sunday papers. It seemed that people were willing to take as much information
as they could get about such an important story.
Some newspapers that are covering big stories and are unable to supply enough
information to satisfy the reader find that additional information can be built on the
top of a relatively spurious incident. The whole story is driven by sensation and built
on rumour. Figure 5.1 illustrates how the unfulfilled information requirement of
readers is satisfied by sensation, rumour and fiction. It is impossible to give true
measurements to such an illustration, so this is merely an attempt to explain graph-
ically what happens in such situations. When the interest level of the target group
of readers exceeds the available news, then a risk area for sensationalism is created
and filled with stories that are designed to appeal to the target group’s appetite for
information about that particular subject.
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Sensationalism 81
100K Boredom level

Risk area for
sensationalism
10K
News
Interest level
1,000
Available news
500
Time
1 hour
2 hours
4 hours
1 day
2 days
4 days
1 week
2 weeks etc
Figure 5.1 Information-tracking in a big story of major interest to the target group
With a relatively un-newsworthy story, the information available far outstrips

the interest level of the target group (Figure 5.2). In this case, the only decision for
an editor is what information to leave out of the story to ensure that the information
offered to the reader matches closely the information required. There is no risk area
for sensationalism with this type of story.
Because even a tightly targeted consumer group will not all want exactly the same
information in a story, some information overload is needed to ensure the editor has
fulfilled all the consumers’ requirements. This is why the information requirement
100K
10K
News
Available news
1,000
Boredom level
500
Interest level
Time
1 hour
2 hours
4 hours
1 day
2 days
4 days
1 week
2 weeks etc
Figure 5.2 Information-tracking in a story of minor significance to the target group

JOUR_C05.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 82
and boredom threshold (the point at which virtually all consumers have moved on
to read something else) are some distance apart in Figures 5.1 and 5.2. The need for
information overload may mean providing up to 100 per cent more information
than one person requires to cover the personal variations between consumers.
From an ethical point of view, the major trouble area is where the interest level
and the boredom threshold exceed the news available. Consumers seek more infor-
mation, and rather than risk them moving to another paper, a journalist can be
tempted into trying to fill the gap (shaded in Figure 5.1). As explained, this is the
area in which sensationalism lives, and it is the place where the clash between jour-
nalism as a social service and the news media as a commercial enterprise is at its
most vivid.
We should also be aware that journalists are not the only ones with a need to get
their story out. The early reporting of important stories means that local sources do
not have the full details. They may have been misled or they may want to portray
themselves in a good light, knowing that mistakes were made, about which they
want to keep quiet. Police sources at Hillsborough, led The Sun to run a story about
Liverpool fans that was completely wrong and still damages The Sun’s circulation
in Liverpool sixteen years on. The Sun attempted another apology as recently as
2005. The killing of Menezes in Stockwell tube station in 2005 was another case
where the story initially given by the police was completely at variance with the
story as finally revealed by a series of inquiries.
Policing the truth
Although consumers ask for accuracy, journalists, as we have already considered,

can only offer an honest presentation of the information they have gathered,
checked as best they can, together with its sources, always remembering that a jour-
nalist will have a professional interest to give the consumer as much accurate
information as possible. This dichotomy presents journalists with a problem when
it comes to codes of conduct. Should they draw up a universal law about accuracy,
one that is either so full of caveats and qualifying phrases it becomes almost worth-
less, or should they draw up a clause they know they cannot follow? Both the NUJ
and the PCC opt for the former, producing accuracy clauses full of caveats such as
‘strive to ensure the information he/she disseminates is fair and accurate’ (NUJ) or
from the PCC a negative approach, ‘Take care not to publish inaccurate, mis-
leading or distorted material’. Of the two, I prefer the positive emphasis even
though this is, of necessity, qualified. Ofcom is quite clear about reporters’ ‘obli-
gation to accuracy and and impartiality’. The BBC is just as definite. ‘The BBC’s
commitment to accuracy is a core editorial value and fundamental to our repu-
tation. . . . Impartiality lies at the heart of the BBC’s commitment to its audiences’
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/impariality/ accessed
14/7/06). This approach means that TV broadcasts will often withhold information
because they are unable to guarantee its accuracy. When transmission does finally
take place, it is often to report that the newspapers have reported that such and
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such has happened. This allows the TV programmes to maintain accuracy without
having to guarantee the actual story. This is a double-edged sword for television. It
means that reports are believed, but it also means that stories are lost because they
have to have a higher grade of accuracy than newspapers.
Interestingly, the BBC’s new Editorial Guidelines seem much more interested in
impartiality, and seem to treat both accuracy and truth as a way of guaranteeing
impartiality rather than a direct loyalty to the viewers or listeners. ‘Impartiality lies
at the heart of the BBC’s commitment to its audiences. It applies across all of our
services and output, whatever the format, from radio news bulletins via our web sites
to our commercial magazines and includes a commitment to reflecting a diversity of
opinion’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/impariality/
accessed 14/7/06).
They remind producers about matters such as distinguishing between primary
and secondary sources, warning of the dangers of using cuttings and library sources
which might be out of date, the difference between mechanical accuracy and a
regard for a wider truth. They also advise producers that it is good practice not to
run a story from a news agency unless it can be substantiated by a BBC correspon-
dent or another agency. The BBC is also well aware of the importance of naming
sources so that viewers can form their own judgement about the evidence.
Reconstructions can be a good way for TV to illustrate what has happened, but the
guidelines give appropriate warning about how to handle these events:
‘Reconstruction should be identified clearly so that no-one is misled.’ The same cri-
teria should be used by both papers and broadcasters when using models to stage
events, or when library film or pictures or computer graphics are used. Captions
with phrasing such as ‘The couple in happier times’, ‘The couple on holiday earlier
this year’, ‘Actors play members of the gang’, ‘A computer simulation of the attack’,
far from detracting from the action, add a sense of credibility and authority without
losing the sense of drama.
The BBC’s guidelines may be comprehensive, but they are far from being a uni-
versal law or a golden mean. The BBC is often seen as authoritative but slightly dull.
A good part of this is its inability to broadcast information which is likely to be
accurate but which they cannot substantiate.
This is not to say that I have any answers of my own. ‘A journalist shall take
every care in an attempt to ensure the information he/she provides consumers is as
truthful as possible’ is as close as I can get. The wording allows for errors but
stresses truthfulness. In many ways this is much better than the mere adherence to
accuracy demanded by the other codes. It accepts that truth is the more important
aim. If journalists are behaving honestly, trying to report the truth, then they should
not object to occasionally admitting an honest mistake. In this circumstance,
printing a correction is the right thing for the ‘good’ journalist to do.
Corrections and right of reply

A correction is used to amend an incorrect fact or false impression that might other-
wise blemish the full truth the journalist was aiming to provide the consumer. It is
JOUR_C05.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 84
not the same as a right of reply. A reporter should always be prepared to print a cor-
rection, and possibly an apology, when he or she makes a mistake or falls short of
his or her own standards of truthfulness and the expectations of the consumer. If
someone is small enough to make a mistake, they should be big enough to apolo-
gise for it. Both the NUJ and the PCC accept this and both have clauses which call
on editors and journalists to publish corrections of significant errors promptly and
with due prominence. The BBC also considers it important to admit mistakes: ‘We
should normally acknowledge serious factual errors and correct mistakes quickly
and clearly. Inaccuracy may lead to a complaint of unfairness. An effective way of
correcting a mistake is saying what was wrong as well as putting it right’
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/accuracy/correcting-
mista.shtml accessed 14/7/06).
The Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint against a newspaper which
refused to print a correction on a matter of fact. The Burton Mail carried a story about a
coach colliding with a car. The coach owner complained that his coach was stationary at
the time and that the story was therefore misleading. The paper accepted that but did not
print a correction or apology. The PCC said it was surprised that the editor had not
resolved such a straightforward matter. ‘While the newspaper may have been given the
wrong information by a third party, Clause 1 of the Code clearly states that “a significant
inaccuracy . . . once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence”.
The editor had failed to comply with this requirement, resulting in a breach of the
Code’ (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=Mzk4MA== accessed
14/7/06).
A right of reply allows people who think an inaccurate impression has been given
about them in an article to seek a response to put the record straight. Many codes
of conduct include a right of reply as well as an obligation to print corrections. The
fact that a right of reply exists in many countries under statute and works relatively
uncontroversially suggests that it should not be a problem to a journalist to print a
reply from people who feel they or their ideas were not presented as truthfully as
was possible. Again, the NUJ and the PCC agree on this issue and suggest a right of
reply should be offered. They differ slightly on what should be offered and why. The
PCC only offers replies to inaccuracies. Clause 2 of its Code says: ‘A fair oppor-
tunity for reply to inaccuracies must be given when reasonably called for’
(http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html accessed 14/7/06). The NUJ calls for the
right of reply to people criticised, whether or not there was any inaccuracy, pro-
vided the issue is of sufficient importance.
The majority of complaints to the PCC are about accuracy (59.4 per cent over
the period 1991–2005, 67.4 per cent in 2005), but there is a small proportion about
the right to reply (2.3 from 1991 to 2005). Most of these complaints are resolved
with the editor and few are adjudicated. Of course this is how it should be; many
newspaper editors will quickly correct mistakes once the matter has been brought
to their attention, particularly if it has been brought to their attention on PCC-
headed paper. The only surprise is that more don’t correct from the first complaint.
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Image manipulation
This is an extension of the need to report truthfully. If a picture is taken and then
manipulated physically or electronically to show something different, the consumer
is not receiving a truthful impression of events. A couple of examples illustrate the
damage done to the media’s credibility by manipulating images. The Sun carried a
front-page story about a monk who had fallen in love with a woman and was being
asked to give up his vocation. The picture they had obtained showed the monk in
ordinary street clothes walking next to the woman, but with a reasonable distance
separating them. The paper admitted in 1993 that the picture was manipulated in
order to change his clothes to those of a monk’s habit. The impression given by this
front-page picture, which was cleverly and undetectably manipulated, was entirely
different from the reality. The Sun admitted in an official statement: ‘We have super-
imposed the monk’s habit to make it clear to the readers that the story is about a
monk.’ In another infamous example, deputy Labour leader John Prescott had his
beer replaced by champagne in a picture used by the Daily Express.
Television is also capable of giving the wrong impression. Electronic manipu-
lation by computer or editing can completely alter the viewers’ perception of events.
During the 1984 miners’ strike in Britain, in the crucial political battle between the
government of Margaret Thatcher and the miners, public opinion was vital. The
miners were seen as doing an important job and were viewed sympathetically by
ordinary people. They were also well supported by other trade unionists. But if it
could be shown that the strikers were unreasonable or violent, public sympathy
would soon ebb away. Several major battles between miners and police damaged the
miners’ case badly; the television coverage consistently showed the miners’ attacks
as happening first and the police’s ‘defensive retaliation’ following. Many miners,
however, claim that this was a distortion. They say that the police always attacked
first, attempting to provoke a violent reaction. Did TV companies, for whatever
reason, distort the reality by editing the tape to show the ‘truth’ as happening as the
government claimed, rather than the ‘truth’ as perceived by the miners? It is prob-
ably now impossible to find a truly unbiased witness to give us a credible answer,
yet this simple example shows how easy it is to distort the picture to present a new
‘truth’.
Digital image processing also allows TV to create images that are impossible to
differentiate from reality. Many feature films and commercials use these techniques
to provide us with fictional or constructed realities that are impossible to distinguish
from reality. The BBC Editorial Guidelines warn that viewers must not be misled
into believing that they are seeing something which is ‘real’ when in fact it is a cre-
ation of a graphic artist.
The Swedish code of conduct has a strong clause on image manipulation:
‘Making a montage, retouching a picture by an electronic method, or formulating a
picture caption should not be performed in a such a way as to mislead or deceive
the reader. Always state, close to the picture, whether it has been altered by montage
or retouching. This also applies to such material when it is filed’ (Swedish Press
Code 1995). The NUJ agreed at its 1996 conference to campaign ‘for the adoption
JOUR_C05.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 86
of a world-wide convention for the marking of photographs that have been digitally
manipulated’. At its 1998 conference the union decided to change its code of
conduct to specifically outlaw the practice of digital manipulation: ‘No journalist
shall knowingly cause or allow the publication or broadcast of a photograph that
has been manipulated unless that photograph is clearly labelled as such.
Manipulation does not include normal dodging, burning, colour balancing, spot-
ting, contrast adjustment, cropping and obvious masking for legal or safety reasons’
(NUJ Code of Conduct 1998).
Impartiality and bias
Impartiality and bias are the big divide as far as TV and newspapers are concerned.
Newspapers do not see it as part of their brief to be impartial whereas it is an
important ethical area for broadcasting. I’ve used the point from the BBC Editorial
Guidelines before, but ‘Impartiality is at the heart of the BBC’. Both history and the
law go into making sure that impartiality is a major cornerstone of British factual
broadcasting. The Broadcasting Acts insist on it and it is a major regulatory purpose
of Ofcom and the BBC.
This means that broadcasting has a duty to be fair to all sides of an argument.
This may involve more than two sides. It is perfectly possible that a controversial
issue has four or five major strands with protagonists supporting and opposing dif-
ferent strands all at the same time. Television producers must ensure not only that
each protagonist gets equal air time, but also that the major strands of the debate
get a fair hearing. Political matters are particularly sensitive but again, just giving
each major party equal time may not be enough. Discussions on the environment,
for instance, might involve the Green Party as well as the three main parties.
European debates might involve the Referendum Party. These specialist interests
should bring new arguments and points of view to the debate. For instance, all three
major parties were in favour of staying in Europe in 2005. To get views from a party
which wished to pull out (or at least implied that it would be prepared to pull out)
one would have to talk to the UK Independence Party. But since this party had no
policy views in other areas and no MPs, it would not be asked about the economy.
Newspapers, on the other hand, are almost always biased and have no legal obli-
gation to present news impartially. They do, however, have an obligation to tell the
truth and this should limit the amount of slanting possible, although there is no obli-
gation on a newspaper to present all sides of an argument. Whilst some are better
than others at presenting a range of views, very few present all the facts all of the
time. It is necessary to read a number of papers and listen to the news if one is to
get a balanced view of the news.
Comment
This sub-section of impartiality is slightly different in that comment in the media is
common currency. Whether it is reviewing a film or a book, describing the perform-
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Impartiality and bias 87
ance of a sporting team or player, or analysing the ideas of a politician, journalists

in all media are commenting about things and presenting their opinions to the con-
sumers. There is nothing wrong with the presentation of comment in the media
provided everyone is clearly aware that those views are the opinion of the writer or
broadcaster and are not to be taken as fact.
Many newspapers, radio stations and TV channels rely on opinionated writers or
presenters to outrage or cheer up their readers or listeners. Indeed, publication of
strong and controversial opinion without the need to present a single supporting
fact is the historical birthplace of modern journalism, which sprang to cynical
middle age from the cradle of political partisanship. Only if comment is mixed in
with factual reporting in an attempt to mislead or distort should the journalist
beware. Again, truthfulness is damaged if the consumer is led through a series of
opinions under the guise of truth.
The BBC and other broadcasters have a legal obligation to be impartial and this
can give rise to problems with comment programmes. The BBC Editorial Guidelines
says that such programmes involve special obligations. Such programmes must be
signalled in advance to the audience and editors must ensure that comment does not
misrepresent opposing viewpoints. The Guidelines suggests that it may be appro-
priate to offer an opportunity to respond and that it may be inappropriate for
regular presenters and reporters to present personal views on such programmes.
The PCC Code of Practice has a clause on comment: ‘Newspapers, while free to
be partisan, should distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.’ The
NUJ Code calls on its members to ‘defend the principle of the freedom of the press
and other media in relation to . . . the expression of comment and criticism’ and to
‘avoid the expression of comment and conjecture as established fact’. Ofcom’s code
only calls for news to be impartial, which has some place in this section although
partiality is not the same as comment.
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Chapter 6
P R IVACY AN D I NTR U S I O N
• A right to privacy in our personal lives

• The moral problems of intrusion into personal privacy
• The development of privacy as a matter of public concern
Privacy is one of the more controversial areas of professional ethics. Many of the
big ethical debates of the past fifty years have been about intrusions into privacy and
the way journalists have handled them. There has been a steady growth in the desire
for privacy since the Second World War which is matched by a rising desire to know
more about the celebrities that have become a central part of many of our lives.
What is privacy?
‘A society which permits individuals to choose how they are to lead their lives is one
which will recognise the choice of privacy’ (Lord Chancellor’s Department 1993: 9).
Invasion of privacy is the journalistic ethical issue that probably most concerns the
public. It is certainly the issue that has underlined many of the major debates on the
press of the past twenty years or so. Privacy is recognised by psychologists as a basic
human need, a drive almost as powerful as sex, hunger and thirst. We all need
privacy and we need to be in control of the flow of information about our private
selves. It is often said that information is power, but it is just as true that control
over information is power.
There are some other concepts that we need to consider when looking at privacy.
They are related and are often confused. The most private condition is secret. We
all have areas we want to keep private, but not all of us see those as secret. Secret
means keeping the information from everyone, or at least from all but a small,
chosen group. Some effort is made to ensure the information remains secret. Private
is a step up. This is information that we don’t necessarily want others to know, but
is not a secret. Often this level of information would not seriously damage a person
should it reach the public domain, but we might prefer that it shouldn’t because it
would give others more information about us, and therefore more power over us,
than we would prefer. For instance, my choice of music or food is not a secret and
if it got into the public domain I would not be too upset – surprised perhaps, but
not upset. However, I would probably prefer that it didn’t as it would give strangers
the feeling of a greater level of intimacy than I would prefer. This brings us to a
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What is privacy? 89
related concept, that of intimacy. Intimacy is the sharing of private information with
someone you trust or someone with whom you are attempting to develop a relation-
ship. This intimacy, the sharing of private information, is used to build
relationships. At the level of acquaintance, we would not share much in the way of
private information. Friends would know a good deal more.
There exist a number of theories about privacy and related concepts and we
should examine them. Archard (1998: 83) claims that ‘Privacy has to do with
keeping personal information non-public or undisclosed.’ He goes on to explain that
some classes of information might be considered private by some, but not others.
This is quickly proved. Ask any friend to give you some private information. You
will find that the type or class of information given is very varied. One friend might
be happy to share her weight, another might not and instead would choose to let
you know her salary. Another friend might be happy to let you know his favourite
colour, while another would only say he likes lager. It is probably reasonable to
assume that the closer a person’s private details are to the cultural norm, the happier
they would be to share the information. The more different the information, the
more privately the information is held.
Parent expands Archard’s view about personal information a little but the essen-
tials remain the same: ‘Privacy is the condition of not having undocumented
personal knowledge about one possessed by others’ (Parent 1992: 92). She qualifies
this, saying that this should mean facts that most individuals in a given society do
not want widely known about themselves. This is an interesting qualification as it
suggests that there is information that is not private, even though we might not tell
anyone about it, simply because it is not in that class of information that a given
society believes should be private. But that distorts the nature of privacy. Surely if I
decide information should not normally be shared, it is private, regardless of what
my culture says. Of course, I am more likely to keep information private if my
culture sees that as a class of information that should generally be kept private.
Wacks talks about privacy being the use or abuse of personal information about
an individual: this personal information being facts, communications or opinions
which that individual might regard as intimate or sensitive. This is a development
on the previous theories as it is now not concerned with the information itself but
the usage of it by others. (Wacks 1995: 23).
Sissella Bok introduces a more complex theory on privacy. This does not concen-
trate solely on the information held and whether it is in the public domain or not
and therefore whether it is private or not, but she considers who controls access to
the information:
Being protected from unwanted access by others. . . . Claims to privacy are claims to control access
to what one takes – however grandiosely – to be one’s personal domain. (Bok 1982: 10–11)
Judith Innes believes that privacy is dependent not on the information itself, but
on the motivation for keeping things private or revealing them. This takes privacy
into a wider arena. Remember, we are not necessarily talking about secrets here, but
private information. Secrets are things we do not want others to know and we go
to some lengths to keep them secret. We either share the information with no one,
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90 6 • Privacy and intrusion
or at most a small number of trusted people; trusted either because we believe them
to be trustworthy, or because we believe they have a very strong motive of their own
to keep the matter secret.
Innes believes we must reject what she calls separation-based definitions of
privacy or a definition that defines privacy as not being looked at or listened to. She
gives the example of someone locked in a room – they would have privacy, but it
would be an undesirable privacy that they would seek to end. If privacy is about
controlling access, then that same person has no privacy, as they do not control
access: someone else has the key. Both these definitions fail then, because no one
would seriously suggest that this was a true measure of privacy or its removal. The
TV show Big Brother, for instance, is not about privacy, but about revelation,
which is not the same thing at all.
Privacy is more closely linked to intimacy, information that we only share with
those we trust and with whom we want to build a bond. Fried talks about the com-
modification of intimacy:
close relationships involve the voluntary and spontaneous relinquishment of something between
friend and friend, lover and lover. The title to information about oneself conferred by privacy
provides the necessary something . . . intimacy is the sharing of information about one’s actions,
beliefs, or emotions which one does not share with all, and which one has the right not to share
with anyone. (Charles Fried as cited by Innes 1992: 82–3)
This does not go far enough for Innes. She believes that intimacy must have a
special meaning for this commodification to work. For her, privacy hinges on the
motivation of imparting information, not the act itself. This links into intimacy. If I
share information about myself that I consider to be private, in terms of developing
an intimate relationship, then I have the right to consider this information private.
If I release it in order to make money or to make myself famous, then my motiv-
ation was not to develop an intimate relationship, but to develop a public
relationship. In Innes’ theory, privacy protects a realm of intimacy:
intimate matters draw their intimacy from their motivational dependency. . . . To claim that an act
or activity is intimate is to claim that it draws its meaning and value from the agent’s love, liking,
or care. (Innes 1992: 90)
So for Innes, privacy is all about our motivation in intimate relations. Something
that is done out of intimacy might well be private, while the same action done for
money or fame would not.
Her theories help explain why seemingly private actions can be brought into
the public realm, because the motivation is to develop a public persona or to
make money. Kiss-and-tell stories, for instance, might well be entirely arranged
for money or fame and are not private acts. The problem is that for ordinary
people, these acts are private, because their motivation in normal relations is to
develop an intimate relationship. Since most people do these things for reasons
that should allow them to keep those actions private, there is a level of confu-
sion about whether they should be private just because they are those sorts of
actions.
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What is privacy? 91
Of course this may work in reverse. Because journalists spend a lot of time these
days printing stories that apparently invade privacy because the acts revealed were
motivated by the search for fame and money, they may no longer be entirely certain
that some acts should remain private because their motivation is the search for inti-
macy.
I mentioned earlier that we are less concerned about revealing intimate details if
they fit firmly into what we believe to be society’s norms. In order for us to under-
stand the limits of those norms, we gossip and exchange information about our view
of society and its boundaries of behaviour. Those of high status and celebrity can be
role models; we look to them as major boundary shapers. We not only want to
know what they are doing in the intimate areas of their lives, but also may need to
know in order to help us understand what is or is not acceptable to society gener-
ally. This may be why many of the fiercest rows about privacy have involved the
royal family: their marriages and love lives have been laid bare for our inspection
under the guise of public interest, and many people have rightly asked whether the
press has gone too far, too often – especially since the death of Diana, Princess of
Wales, in August 1997.
Whilst ‘seven out of ten of all complaints made to the PCC concern inaccuracy
in press reporting’ (PCC, 1995: 7), the complaints that cause the most controversy
are the invasions of privacy. Most codes of conduct, and certainly the NUJ’s, the
PCC’s, the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Ofcom’s, are concerned with privacy.
However, writing a universal law to cover privacy is very difficult if we are to allow
for the public’s ‘right to know’ in certain cases. There are too many variables
around the circumstances of each invasion of privacy to allow for hard-and-fast
rules. This must be particularly true if what we are attempting to measure is a
person’s motivation, something that nearly always remains opaque and impene-
trable. When it comes to assessing whether to use a story which appears to invade
someone’s privacy, Clifford Christians et al. (1998: 111) advocate three tests for the
journalist:
1. Decency and fairness is non-negotiable.
2. ‘Redeeming social value’ should be used as a criterion for deciding when to
invade privacy.
3. The dignity of the person should not be maligned in the name of press
privilege.
There have been many serious invasions of privacy by the British press over the
years and these breaches, especially those involving Princess Diana, have led to an
outcry to introduce some form of legislation.
The right to privacy

A number of countries around the world already have legislation to prevent invasions of
privacy. France has specific laws. Others, such as Belgium or Italy, have clauses in their
constitutions that protect the private rights of citizens. The UN Declaration of Human
Rights also has such a clause, as does the European Convention on Human Rights.
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People’s concern with invasions of privacy is a fairly recent phenomenon. Very

little was written about privacy until the end of the last century. One of the earliest
definitions of privacy is Thomas Cooley’s (1888) ‘the right to be left alone’ as cited
in Warren and Brandeis’ treatise on privacy. Concern over invasions of privacy
started to grow in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, after the Second World War.
As radio and television gradually took over the alerting element of hard news from
newspapers, the tabloids increasingly published gossip and with it increased the
number of stories involving invasions of privacy. The first British Royal
Commission on the Press in 1947–49 says hardly anything about the invasion of
privacy. It is concerned with monopoly ownership and accuracy. By the late 1960s
and early 1970s, however, it was firmly on the agenda. The Nordic Conference on
the Right of Privacy (1967) came to the conclusion that:
The right to privacy is the right to be let alone to live one’s own life with the minimum degree of
interference. In expanded form this means:
The right of the individual to lead his [sic] own life protected against:
(a) Interference with his private, family and home life;
(b) Interference with his physical and mental integrity or his moral and intellectual freedom;
(c) Attacks on his honour and reputation;
(d) Being placed in a false light;
(e) The disclosure of embarrassing facts relating to his private life;
(f) The use of his name, identity or likeness;
(g) Spying, prying, watching and besetting;
(h) Interference with his correspondence;
(i) Misuse of his private communications, written or oral;
(j) Disclosure of information given or received by him in a condition of professional confidence.
(Committee on Privacy 1972: 327)
In 1972, a committee was set up in Britain under the chairmanship of the Rt Hon
Kenneth Younger. This investigated the need for privacy legislation. It found, as had
others before them, some difficulty in defining precisely what was meant by
‘privacy’. ‘The majority of us regard the “Justice” Committee’s conclusions as one
more indication, and a highly significant one, that the concept of privacy cannot be
satisfactorily defined’ (Committee on Privacy 1972: 17). The ‘Justice’ Committee’s
conclusion says:
We have therefore concluded that no purpose would be served by our making yet another attempt
at developing an intellectually rigorous analysis. We prefer instead to leave the concept much as we
have found it, that is as a notion about whose precise boundaries there will always be a variety of
opinions, but about whose central area there will always be a large measure of agreement. (Ibid.:
18)
This Committee came to the conclusion that there were risks in placing excessive
reliance on the law in order to protect privacy. It recommended that the then Press
Council should codify its adjudications on invasions of privacy and that the then
Programmes Complaints Commission – the forerunner of the BCC – should have its
power extended to handle complaints about privacy.
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What is privacy? 93
The 1947–49 Royal Commission on the Press also came to the conclusion that
the law was no place for privacy: ‘Quite apart from the fact that we consider the
Press Council a better forum for establishing rules of conduct for the press in
relation to invasions of privacy, we think it would reduce its status and importance
if its jurisdiction over this area of activity were to be removed’ (Royal Commission
on the Press 1977: 187). The Calcutt Report on Privacy and Related Matters, set up
by the government in 1989 and reporting in 1990, came to similar conclusions, but
decided that the Press Council should be replaced by the PCC. It recommended
against a statutory tort of infringement of privacy but did want to see the introduc-
tion of a criminal offence for physical intrusion. Any person able to prove intrusion
would be able to prevent the publication of an article gathered in that way. Taking
photographs and the placing of surveillance devices without consent should also be
an offence. A public interest defence was available.
The House of Commons’ Heritage Committee also examined the issue and came
to the conclusion that a protection of privacy bill should be introduced. In 1995 the
Heritage minister finally reported that the government had been unable to formu-
late wording and therefore was not intending to introduce such a bill.
The Government has long recognised that there is, in principle, a case for the introduction of such
offences. . . . The government has, however, so far been unable to construct legislation which, in
practice, would be sufficiently workable to be responsibly brought to the statute book. It has no
wish to introduce bad legislation. It therefore has no immediate plans to legislate in this area.
(Department of National Heritage 1995: 9)
The Labour government made it clear shortly after its election in 1997 that it also
favoured self-regulation and did not intend to introduce privacy legislation. It did,
however, introduce the Human Rights Act 1998 in order to bring the European
Convention on Human Rights into UK law as required by the European
Commission. This gave UK citizens a right to privacy for the first time:
Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is
in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national
security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or
crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of
others. (Human Rights Act 1998, chapter 42 schedule 1)
In order to benefit under the Human Rights Act one must show that one’s rights
have been curtailed and seek relief through the courts. The Act specifically prevents
restraint of publication unless ‘the court is satisfied that the applicant is likely to
establish that publication should not be allowed’ (Human Rights Act 1998, chapter
42 clause 12). The court is also specifically obliged under the Act to have particular
regard to the Convention’s right of freedom of expression if the material seems to
the court to be journalistic, literary or artistic material and the extent to which pub-
lication of the material is in the public interest, and with regard to any relevant
privacy code. It is generally accepted that this is a direct reference to the PCC Code
of Practice. The Human Rights Act produced a very significant change in the
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approach taken to the behaviour of the media by the law and by the public. A series
of significant cases followed through the courts and these will be examined later in
this chapter. In 2003 the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, met to
discuss ‘Privacy and Media Intrusion’. It examined problems with the PCC and
looked closely at the working of various regulatory bodies. Because Ofcom, the
Office of Communications, had only just started its role of regulating broadcasting,
not much was said by the committee about this body. But it had plenty to say about
the PCC (see Chapter 16). The committee concluded that there should be a privacy
law:
On balance we firmly recommend that the Government reconsider its position and bring forward
legislative proposals to clarify the protection that individuals can expect from unwarranted
intrusion by anyone – not the press alone – into their private lives. (House of Commons Culture,
Media and Sport Committee 2003: para. 111)
In a mirror of the same debate ten years before, the government quickly made it
clear that it had no intention of introducing a privacy law. The history of privacy in
the UK is summarised in Exhibit 6.1.
Exhibit 6.1 The history of privacy in the U K

Privacy has a relatively short history in the UK and there was little concern about it
until widespread literacy made reading about your fellow citizens a possibility and pho-
tography made picture intrusions a reality.
1926 The Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Act limited what could be
written about divorces. This was one of the first pieces of legislation deter-
mining what could be written about people’s personal lives.
1933 Children and Young Persons Act 1933 prevented the reporting of the identity of
children (aged 10–14) and young persons (aged 14–17) as alleged offenders or
witnesses in magistrates’ courts.
1937 Both proprietors’ and journalists’ organisations passed formal resolutions con-
demning methods of news-gathering which caused distress to private persons.
1947 The 1947 Royal Commission on the Press paid little attention to privacy. It was
suggested to the Commission that intrusions into the privacy of individuals,
especially those who have suffered bereavement, was an abuse that should be
corrected by legislation. The Commission felt it would be ‘extremely difficult to
devise legislation which would deal with the mischief effectively and be capable
of enforcement’ (Royal Commission 1949: 170) and that it was up to the industry
to make condemnation of bad practice effective. The General Council of the
Press (as suggested by the Commission) would have a role to play here.
1961 The 1961 Royal Commission on the Press said nothing about privacy.
However, a bill was put before Parliament by Lord Mancroft in the same year
to protect a person from any unjustifiable publication relating to his private
affairs and to give him rights at law in the event of such publication. It was
given a second reading but was withdrawn at the end of the debate to go into
committee.
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What is privacy? 95
1967 Mr Alexander Lyon MP introduced a bill to protect persons from any unreason-
able and serious interference with their seclusion of themselves, their family or
their property from the public. The bill was introduced as a ten-minute bill and
there was no second reading.
The Nordic Conference on the Right of Privacy was highly influential in
developing some of the main concerns about privacy.
1969 Mr Brian Walden MP introduced a bill to establish a right of privacy, to make
consequential amendments to the law of evidence and for connected purposes.
His bill was withdrawn after the second reading debate.
1970 The first stab at a privacy law was attempted by the Justice Committee which
investigated privacy and the law and reported back to Parliament.
1972 The Younger Committee on privacy concluded that: ‘Privacy is ill-suited to be
the subject of a long process of definition through the building up of precedents
over the years since the judgments of the past would be an unreliable guide to
any current evaluation of privacy’ (Committee on Privacy 1972: 206). On the
other hand, it pointed out that without precedent the law would remain ‘an ill-
defined and unstable concept’ (ibid.) as it was first formulated. In the end they
agreed to three things:
• The restatement of the law of breach of confidence.
• The introduction of laws banning electronic bugging.
• The introduction of a new tort of publication of information gained unlaw-
fully.
A minority report by Mr Alexander Lyon MP favoured the addition of a civil
tort for invasion of privacy. He had already introduced a bill to attempt this in
the past. Mr D. Ross also issued a minority report favouring a general right of
privacy along the lines of Mr Brian Walden’s bill (see 1969 above).
1974 The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 made it an offence to detail an
offender’s criminal past after a suitable period of rehabilitation had elapsed.
1976 The Sexual Offences Act 1976 made it an offence to name the victims and
accused in rape cases.
1977 The 1977 Royal Commission discussed privacy but decided this was not within
its remit.
In February, Mr Tom Litterick MP attempted to introduce a Freedom of
Information and Privacy Bill. It did not get past its first reading.
1984 The Data Protection Act 1984 was agreed, giving protection to the privacy of
personal data held on computers. The 1992–96 Conservative government had
intended to allow government institutions to share computer-held information
in a way that is barred under the present Act. This was opposed by those con-
cerned about government invasions of privacy. On the other hand, newspaper
editors were becoming concerned about the use of the Data Protection Act 1984
as a way of preventing the release of information. They were concerned that
changes in the Act could tighten up their access to information about people.
1988 A Right of Privacy Bill was introduced to the house by Mr William Cash MP to
‘establish a right of privacy, to make amendments to the law of evidence, and for
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connected purposes’. This would have allowed for civil action and had a public
benefit defence. Proving that something is for the public benefit is not the same
as proving it to be in the public interest. The bill did not receive a second
reading.
The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1988 removed the right of the
accused in rape cases to have his name kept confidential. The right of the victim
to keep her name confidential was also brought forward to the moment an accu-
sation was made rather than when the case came to court, as had previously been
the case.
1989 A Protection of Privacy Bill to establish a right of privacy against the unautho-
rised use or disclosure of private information and for connected purposes was
introduced into parliament by Mr John Browne MP. This bill made breaching
privacy a civil offence with a public interest defence. It was withdrawn after the
committee stage but before the report stage. Breach of confidence law does have
some part to play in privacy. The law was best defined in 1990 by the Master of
the Rolls Sir John Donaldson in a judgment Attorney General v Guardian
Newspapers.
The Children Act 1989 raised the age at which minors could be identified to 18.
1990 The Calcutt Committee on privacy and related matters recommended that a law
should be introduced making physical intrusion an offence, but did not call for
a privacy law.
1992 The Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 widened the range of victims who
are legally entitled to keep their names secret. Both men and women who were
the victims of sexual assault, buggery, incest, under-age sex or indecent conduct
towards a child now had the right to keep their names secret.
1993 Calcutt looked at privacy and press self-regulation and reported in January, rec-
ommending that the government look at introducing a tort for infringement.
The Heritage Committee discussed privacy and reported in March. They
decided that a protection of privacy law should be introduced, with a public
interest defence, but that this would apply to all citizens, covering invasions of
privacy on a wider basis than just publication.
1994 The government announced that it had postponed indefinitely plans for privacy
laws, despite issuing a consultation paper on privacy.
1995 In July, the Heritage Secretary, Mrs Virginia Bottomley, presented the govern-
ment’s response to the consultation paper to Parliament. There should be no
privacy legislation. A few changes to the PCC were suggested, otherwise matters
were to remain as they were.
1996 Diana, Princess of Wales won an injunction to prevent a freelance photographer
approaching within 300 metres. Many newspapers, particularly the Daily Mail,
tried to take the moral high ground by condemning the photographer for his
methods and claiming not to use his pictures.
1997 The death of the Princess of Wales brought howls of general protest about the
alleged intrusions of the press. Lord Spencer tried to relaunch his campaign to
introduce a privacy law, but was refused by the government who said that it was
not the time to rush into things. The government announced it intended to
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What is privacy? 97
introduce the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, which some
saw as privacy law by the back door.
1998 In February, Lord Irvine of Lairg, the Lord Chancellor, proposed a new law of
privacy that would allow for prior restraint by the PCC and the payment of com-
pensation to those whose privacy was breached. He was immediately rebuked by
the Prime Minister as being out of keeping with the agreed Cabinet line and
ordered to reaffirm the government line in the Lords. A week or so later, Tony
Blair told the House of Commons that he had taken personal charge of the
Human Rights Bill in an effort to prevent a ‘back door’ privacy law.
The European Convention on Human Rights was introduced into law via the
Human Rights Act 1998. Following its introduction, a number of test cases were
heard that have started to produce a slightly different view of privacy.
The Data Protection Act 1998 also caused some concern now that most news-
papers and broadcast operations use computers for writing stories and storing
information.
2003 The House of Commons Culture , Media and Sport Committee called for a new
law on privacy following hearings on Privacy and Media Intrusion. The govern-
ment quickly responded saying it would not introduce a privacy law.
2006 The PCC amended its code of practice to include a clause about suicide to avoid
intrusion into private grief in such circumstances.
The present law affecting privacy

Just because there is no specific law against invasions of privacy (other than the
Human Rights Act) this does not mean to say that journalists can do whatever they
want. Alongside the laws on defamation and malicious falsehood, there are a range
of laws which offer a patchwork protection of parts of people’s private lives. These
include the Data Protection Act 1998, the laws of confidence and copyright. It is the
law of confidence that is perhaps being used most often by the courts as a way of
protecting privacy. This is perhaps not too surprising considering the clear link
between our desire to protect privacy and intimacy as identified above. If we are to
protect our intimacy, and it seems to be the main reason why privacy is important,
then our confidential dealings with others are often at the heart of that.
The law of confidence was redefined by Sir John Donaldson in 1990. Since then
there have been a number of important cases brought, seeking relief from invasions
of privacy but ending up slightly reshaping the laws of confidence. These all serve
to confirm that there is a right to the confidentiality of information maintained in
this country. Sir John Donaldson’s view was that ‘Since the right to have confiden-
tiality maintained is an equitable right, it will (in legal theory and practical effect if
the aid of the court is invoked) “bind the conscience” of third parties, unless they
are bona fide purchasers for value without notice . . .’. However, he qualifies this by
saying that ‘the right will be lost or, at all events, the courts will not uphold and
enforce it, if there is just cause or excuse for communicating the information’, and
‘the right will also be lost if the information, which is subject to a right of confiden-
tiality, is published to the world by or with the consent of the confider, but it will
JOUR_C06.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 98
not necessarily be lost if such publication is by the consent or with the consent of
the confidant . . .’ (Lord Chancellor’s Department 1993: 57). In the case of X v Y,
Mr Justice Rose restrained the publication of a story obtained from health service
workers which named two doctors with AIDS. He said that the public interest in
preserving the confidentiality of hospital records outweighed the freedom of the
press to publish such information. In a later case, the courts upheld an order
restraining the Mail on Sunday from publishing the memoirs of a nanny who had
looked after the Blair’s children on the grounds that a duty of confidence was owed
in these circumstances. Further cases that are examined in more detail later on have
also changed the view on privacy. The Michael Douglas/Catherine Zeta Jones case,
the Naomi Campbell case and the Anna Ford case have all added further strength
to a growing raft of laws that are adding impetus to a right to privacy.
Court reporting can sometimes protect a person’s privacy where a judge has
ordered that names should not be used. This usually applies to juveniles so that their
privacy is maintained, but it can apply to other cases. Rape victims and victims of
certain other sex offences are granted anonymity under the Sexual Offences
(Amendment) Acts 1976 and 1992. The government published a Bill in 2006 pro-
posing that Coroners could gain the power to keep the names of victims or some
interested party anonymous.
It is illegal to intercept communications without the consent of one of the parties. So
reading letters or taping telephone calls during transmission are both illegal. The Data
Protection Acts 1984 and 1998 put limits on the use of data held on computers and give
rights to the people whom the data concerns. The 1998 Act gives people the right to find
out what is being held on computers about them, particularly ‘sensitive personal data’:
(a) the racial or ethnic origin of the data subject,
(b) his political opinions,
(c) his religious beliefs or other beliefs of a similar nature,
(d) whether he is a member of a trade union (within the meaning of the Trade Union and
Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992),
(e) his physical or mental health or condition,
(f) his sexual life,
(g) the commission or alleged commission by him of any offence, or
(h) any proceedings for any offence committed or alleged to have been committed by him. (Data
Protection Act 1998, section 2)
This could have given problems to journalists writing investigative stories, so

journalism is specifically excluded as one of ‘the special purposes’:
(a) the purposes of journalism,
(b) artistic purposes, and
(c) literary purposes. (Data Protection Act 1998, section 3)
Section 32 of the Act specifically excludes processing of such data if it is undertaken

with a view to publication.
The Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875, although intended to apply
only to industrial disputes, could be brought to bear to prevent others from persist-
JOUR_C06.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 99
The language of privacy 99
ently following or watching or besetting a person’s house, or place of work, or busi-

ness, with a view to compelling them to do or not do something which he/she has a
right not to do or to do.
The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 offers very clear protection for the
privacy of former criminals. When their offence is considered ‘spent’, after a suit-
able period of rehabilitation, we may no longer write about their conviction or
crime.
The Broadcasting Acts 1990 and 1996 and the Communications Act 2003 are of
more concern to journalists as these give the most control on privacy of any legis-
lation. The Office of Communications (Ofcom) was set up under the 2002 Office of
Communications Act with powers derived from the Communications Act 2003 to
protect audiences from infringment of privacy.
Limits on divorce reporting were set by the Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of
Reports) Act 1926 and later Acts. The Magistrates’ Court Act 1980, The Children
Act 1989 and The Children Act 2004 also limit coverage of private family matters
being dealt with by the courts, although the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 calls for
publicity of those issued with orders. Scotland is very different from England when
it comes to privacy and the Scottish Law Commission in 1977 argued that there is
scope in Scottish law for the development of a remedy for unjustifiable infringement
of privacy. The Criminal Evidence and Youth Justice Act 1999 adds further con-
straints on the publication of the identities of minors in court cases whether victims,
witnesses or alleged offenders.
The language of privacy
One of the major debates around privacy is whether the notoriety or celebrity of a
person allows them less right to privacy than others. Since we are talking about a
general human right here, the view must be that all are entitled to privacy of their
home life. However, those who have gained celebrity or notoriety will have inserted
more of their life into the public domain than others and so are faced with having
more of their private life examined in public than others. This is not to say that the
argument, often developed by the tabloids, that once someone has developed a
public life, their lives are totally open to intrusion, is correct. But it does mean that
having gained celebrity, status, fame or money on the basis of a public life, the
media does have the right to examine that life where conflicts might apply. This can
involve a wide range of people and not just celebrities, the royal family or poli-
ticians. For example, there is almost certainly a public interest defence for invading
the privacy of a local head teacher if it can lead to the truthful revelation that he has
been downloading child pornography onto his computer. This is a person who has
been granted a privileged position and so has specific responsibilities to children,
parents and the community to live up to certain standards, and those people are
entitled to know if this is not happening. In this instance, the event is also a criminal
offence, but what if we choose another example which does not include criminality?
Imagine a priest who is found to be having an affair. Not illegal, but again it is not
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what is expected and the press might well be justified in the public interest in pub-
lishing this. Although it intrudes into the priest’s private life, that intrusion is
justified because the priest’s public life does extend into his private life in a way that
might not apply to an ordinary member of the public; it is important that we know
whether priests are having affairs. It is not significant to anyone other than their
partners if an ordinary person is having an affair, unless we consider adultery so
damaging to society that we should have a view on such affairs.
One problem that would have to be faced is that privacy varies from person to
person; there are some people who are more entitled to elements of privacy than
others and some who have less right than others by virtue of the positions they hold.
A number of people seek social status by holding positions or offices within their
communities that carry increased levels of responsibility and therefore reduced
rights to privacy. Our expectations of politicians, teachers, doctors, lawyers, clergy,
to name just a few, are much higher than those of ordinary citizens. These groups
carry status in society but they pay for that with reduced rights. An office manager
who had an affair with his secretary would not be considered anything other than
foolish, but a teacher who had an affair with a sixth-former or a doctor who had
sex with a patient would, quite rightly, feel the full opprobrium of the community
when his or her privacy was breached and the story published. Such publication
would be in the public interest.
The public clearly identify different groups of people as having different levels of
privacy. These can be loosely identified as:
Those who volunteer for public life: These might include politicians or those seeking
celebrity.
Positions of public responsibility: This would include doctors, teachers and civil ser-
vants; people who have chosen careers that mean they have some level of
responsibility to the public.
Those introduced to public life by accident: This might apply to those dragged into
public life against will, victims of disasters, those who are related to celebrities or
criminals.
Notoriety: These are criminals or others who make themselves notorious.
A study carried out by Matthew Kieran and colleagues found that the public had
little difficulty identifying that whilst children should have considerable (almost
total) control over their privacy, criminals should be entitled to very little control.
False privacy
False privacy is when a complaint about privacy is made concerning information
which is claimed to be false or grossly inaccurate. This is sometimes done so that
the complainant can seek relief without having to prove that the material is either
defamatory or false. The information might, for instance, concern something that
JOUR_C06.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 101
What would a privacy law look like? 101
Table 6.1
Type A B C D E F
Child 54 19 10 6 3 3
Patient with Alzheimer’s disease 54 20 12 4 3 2
Parent of murder victim 54 24 13 4 3 2
Person with severe disability 49 23 14 6 3 2
Witness to a crime 48 28 11 6 3 2
A victim of crime 47 26 12 5 4 4
A lottery winner 46 31 10 5 4 3
A member of the royal family 16 19 22 22 12 6
A schoolteacher 13 24 17 20 17 5
A senior policeman 11 18 15 23 21 9
A senior civil servant 10 15 16 27 21 7
A businessman 9 17 21 28 17 4
A film star 8 13 21 21 10 3
A religious leader 8 12 18 23 21 11
A politician 6 10 14 28 29 11
A shoplifter 4 8 9 24 26 25
A drug dealer 3 3 5 9 20 57
A rapist 3 3 3 8 19 60
Key:
A Right to prevent mention
B Right to prevent transmission of personal details
C Right to control what is said
D Right to be told in advance but not change
E No right to prevent, but right to comment
F No right to change or comment
Source: Kieran, Morrison and Svennevig (2000) ‘Privacy, the public and journalism’, Journalism 1(2)
145–69, Sage, London
the complainant does not want in the public arena and so would refuse to comment
on its truthfulness. The PCC has taken the view that an inaccuracy is not intrusive.
Because the Code of Practice contains rules on both accuracy and privacy, complainants can be in
the position of arguing that a story is either untrue or intrusive, in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) or
3 (Privacy) of the Code. This has two advantages. First, the process is discreet and Commission
hearings held in private, although its findings are of course published. Second, the alternative to the
complaint about privacy is that the story is inaccurate – a less difficult threshold for the
complainant to cross than a complaint about libel, which would be the legal alternative. As long
ago as 1998 the Commission upheld a complaint on this basis, without needing to resolve whether
the allegations in the story were true or not. (Billington v Sunday People, Report 43).
(http://www.pcc.org.uk/assets/111/PCC_Annual_Review2005.pdf)
What would a privacy law look like?
The issues involved in trying to arrive at a legislative mechanism to protect the rights
of citizens against a media that is prepared to make money by exposing the private
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failings of the public are very complex. The position is further muddied in Britain
by having a broadcast regulatory body (Ofcom) that has a statutory duty to inves-
tigate complaints about invasions of privacy and a press regulatory body (PCC)
which has no statutory duty to do anything. The BBC’s Editorial Guidelines has a
fair bit to say about privacy. This is hardly surprising as the BBC is a broadcaster
with statutory obligations about intrusions into privacy.
We will respect privacy and will not infringe it without good reason, wherever in the world we are
operating. Private behaviour, correspondence and conversation will not be brought into the public
domain unless there is a clear public interest. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/
edguide/editorialvalues/privacy.shtml (accessed 19/7/06))
There must, in a democratic society, be a defence for the media which wants to
reveal what those with criminal or antisocial motives are intent on keeping secret.
It is right, for instance, that the public should be told about the politician who is
taking bribes and those who are offering them because this revelation would be in
the public interest. But most people believe there should be limits on invasions of
privacy, hence the calls for legislation.
If the government were to introduce privacy legislation it would first have to
decide whether an invasion of privacy should be a criminal offence or a civil wrong
(or tort). If the matter falls under criminal law, then journalists could face continual
challenge by the police, constantly being arrested and arraigned for alleged breaches
of the law. For this reason, Parliament would be more likely to make privacy a civil
offence: if your privacy was invaded, you could sue. The trouble with this is that it
is likely to become a rich person’s toy. Those who have put themselves in positions
of higher social status may have to accept that this must make them more account-
able to the society that has granted them that status. Should such people then be
allowed to seek less accountability by keeping journalists away with a stream of
actions for breach of privacy? Robert Maxwell used this method to good effect to
protect his name until after his death by issuing defamation suits against any publi-
cation that wrote about him and forcing them to defend the actions. He would then
hold up the action, as he was entitled to do, for up to five years. The defendants
would have to spend many thousands of pounds keeping solicitors at bay without
any recompense, either because the cases never went to court or because even when
costs were awarded, they never covered the full costs accrued.
What this boils down to is that making it a civil offence will mean that journal-
ists will measure a person’s wealth before deciding to invade their privacy. This
makes it more likely that the ‘ordinary’ man in the street will have his privacy
invaded whilst the rich, famous and influential will be able to avoid exposure of
their less worthy deeds by threatening a law suit. It is therefore more likely that such
a law would lead to an increase of invasions of privacy on people whose privacy
should be invaded less – ordinary people without power, money or influence – while
those with these attributes will be able to bring enough pressure to bear to keep their
private lives to themselves, even though the public interest may mean that their
private lives should be exposed. It could also happen that invasions of privacy,
whether of public or private citizens, would continue and that newspapers would
JOUR_C06.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 103
happily pay the damages, but would make sure they got their money’s worth by
really exposing the person’s private life.
We also need to consider how a law would operate. Would the invasion of
privacy be at publication or before? Could a judge be asked to consider each case
before going to press or just to decide whether what is published is an invasion of
privacy and whether or not it is in the public interest? If it is the former, this pres-
ents a range of new problems. At what stage would a plaintiff be able to bring a
case? Could a politician, the minute he or she detected a journalist’s presence, serve
a suit to prevent the journalist’s research? How could a journalist prove that the
investigation was in the public interest without doing the research required? Telling
a court you think that this person might be doing something antisocial is not going
to be good enough, but how can you show your case without investigation?
As this book was going to press, the Irish government introduced a Privacy Bill
into the Irish Parliament. There had been considerable debate about privacy in
Ireland over the previous few years on the back of several high-profile cases. The
Irish press had also been negotiating with the government about the introduction of
a self-regulatory press council. This was in an attempt to regulate the media in
return for a liberalising of the libel laws there, seen to be draconian by the press. A
new Defamation Bill was also introduced for discussion at the same time as the
Privacy Bill. This new Privacy Bill would introduce a tort of violation of privacy into
Ireland. This would mean that any person who wilfully and without lawful auth-
ority violated another’s privacy would commit a civil wrong, which could be
relieved by awarding damages. The Bill’s definition of privacy was not limited to
home or family life, as identified in the Human Rights Act, and it could therefore
cover all facets of a person’s life. There would be exceptions concerning the public
good, the rights of others and public order and morality. The main defences allowed
for violating such privacy are proposed to be: a range of defences intended to
protect public good and public order; a public interest defence where this was done
in good faith for the public good; or it was an act of news-gathering done in good
faith, for the discussion of a matter of public importance, for the public benefit and
that it was fair and reasonable in all the circumstances.
Intrusion and harassment
This becomes an issue during the reporting stage rather than at publication.
Removing material from someone’s dustbin, shouting at them from street corners or
telephoning them late at night are all forms of harassment and are an unwarranted
intrusion. The NUJ has clauses on this matter, as has the PCC and the BBC, but the
one difficulty faced by the PCC is how to enforce its Code as the number of free-
lances used by the industry grows. Whilst the PCC can insist that a paper which
sends a staff reporter to harass someone prints an adverse adjudication of its
actions, or Ofcom can demand that a TV station which broadcasts a programme
containing such harassment publishes a similar adjudication, if freelance journalists
are intruding, they may well not be working for any particular paper or broadcast
JOUR_C06.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 104
channel and so no one can be taken to task about the matter. With the rise in free-
lance working, as papers and broadcast stations cut back their staff, this is likely to
be an increasing problem, particularly as freelances have more to gain by being
more intrusive and have a higher commercial imperative to get the story. Their loy-
alties are not so tightly directed to readers and they have little loyalty to editors and
none to proprietors. Their loyalties must be directed to themselves, their families
and, to a much lesser extent, the readers.
What do we mean by intrusion and harassment?

As with many moral judgements, one person’s idea of what constitutes intrusion is
another person’s polite enquiry. The NUJ, BBC and PCC Codes all advise against
intrusion into people’s grief or shock. Ofcom’s code, developed from the old
Broadcasting Standards Commission’s code is about fairness and intrusion is not
specifically mentioned. The NUJ Code says that journalists shall do nothing which
entails intrusion into private grief and shock unless it is in the public interest. The
PCC’s Code only says that such enquiries should be carried out with ‘sympathy and
discretion’, although, confusingly, it does mention intrusion under its privacy
clause. This can be difficult to work with as there is a public interest defence to this
privacy clause. How can a reporter know if the matter is in the public interest until
‘intrusions and enquiries into an individual’s private life’ have been completed?
We need to separate privacy and intrusion as concepts. Breach of privacy is the
publication of private matters; intrusion is the way those enquiries are carried out.
Intrusion can be found in far wider circumstances than in someone’s private grief.
Finding photographers in your back garden is an intrusion. Reporters going through
your rubbish bin or standing in your kitchen are intrusions. Intrusion, according to
The Oxford Concise English Dictionary is to ‘thrust oneself uninvited’. This does
not alter whether the reporter has a good reason for intruding. This is one of the
reasons why the codes concentrate on grief and shock only. At any other time, the
codes seem to say, the victims of the intrusion should deal with it themselves. As a
way of measuring if the reporter was intrusive, the codes rely entirely on what is
published and why.
We need to consider whether the ends justify the means. If a minister of the
Crown is having an affair, but the press only discovers this by tracking him 24 hours
a day, discovering the place where he meets his lover, breaking into that house and
setting up bugs and hidden cameras, are they then morally right in claiming this
exposure is in the public interest? Or is this intrusion going too far to be justified?
If the answer is that the intrusion (not necessarily the publication) can be justified,
does this give the press the universal right to do this to anybody and then decide
afterwards whether it is in the public interest to publish? And what happens on all
those occasions when the person is shown to be entirely blameless? The way the
story is gathered has a strong moral element that is separate from the moral element
of publication.
The BBC is quite clear where it stands on intrusion: ‘We must never use unat-
tended recording equipment on private property without permission of the owner,
JOUR_C06.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 105
occupier or agent unless for the purpose of gaining evidence of serious crime’
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/privacy/secretrecnews.
shtml (accessed 19/7/06)). Even then, the Controller of Editorial Policy must always
agree in advance and will require clear evidence that the crime has been committed
by those who are going to be bugged. The BBC also condemns what it calls ‘fishing
expeditions’: that is, there must be some evidence of wrong-doing by ‘identifiable
individuals’ before secret recording can take place. The only exceptions the BBC
allows are when filming is necessary for the purpose of showing social attitudes, and
the essence of the programme is that people should behave naturally. In this case,
permission to use the footage has to be obtained from the people involved. If iden-
tifiable people do not give permission, their faces should be obscured, a relatively
easy task with modern digital editing.
Only 3.6 per cent of the complaints investigated by the PCC up to 2005 con-
cerned intrusion, so it is not a large part of their work. However, these were only
intrusions that fall into the grief and shock category. In the privacy category (12.7
per cent), there has been a sharp rise in the level of complaints and some of these
are certainly about intrusion. Very few complaints to the PCC concern straight
intrusion. Nearly all involve complaints about harassment (3.1 per cent of com-
plaints).
Harassment
Let us now turn to the issue of harassment. The acid test of harassment needs to be
a clear indication from the person to be interviewed that he or she does not wish to
be interviewed. Continuing to press him or her for an interview after this is for the
journalist to lay him or herself open to allegations of harassment.
The BBC Editorial Guidelines has a full page about harassment. Doorstepping is
of particular concern – the practice of reporters turning up uninvited to confront
and record a potential interviewee without permission, usually on private property.
Such invasions need permission and should only be carried out if the ‘investigation
involves crime or significant wrong-doing’ and there is ‘good reason to believe the
investigation will be frustrated if the individual is approached openly’
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/privacy/doorstepping.
shtml accessed 19/7/06).
Media scrums are also of concern to the BBC and the PCC. This is where there
are so many reporters that their sheer numbers can be intimidating, even if the
objects of their interest are willing to talk. The BBC is prepared to accept pooling
arrangements and will withdraw if it is clear the subject is not going to appear. The
PCC made it clear in four judgments against different papers covering the same issue
that it did not find ‘collective harassment’ acceptable:
While in this case the Commission did not find evidence to justify criticising this or any other
individual newspaper, it would not hesitate to do so if in a future case it became apparent that an
individual newspaper or reporter either played a leading part in unjustified collective harassment or
did not desist when personally asked to do so. (PCC, Report No. 37, 1997: 12)
JOUR_C06.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 106
It is often easier to find out what the PCC believes is not harassment than the
other way around. A Sun picture taken of ‘Moors murderer’ Ian Brady with a very
long range telephoto lens in hospital was not harassment despite there being PCC
clauses both on taking pictures in hospital and of using long-range lenses. The
public interest was served, the PCC said in Report No. 31 (1995). Nor was it harass-
ment for the Daily Mail to ring Judy Finnegan’s mother and, on being told she did
not do interviews with journalists on the telephone, send a reporter to her home.
Both reporters finished the interview politely on being told by Mrs Finnegan that she
did not want to speak to them.
In 1984 the Daily Mail had a complaint upheld against it for harassment after its
reporters tried to photograph and interview a woman lecturer allegedly involved
with a runaway jeweller. The college alleged that the reporter and photographer
refused to leave college premises when asked, and followed the woman around the
college, even entering a classroom in which she was due to teach. She was forced to
leave under a blanket after the photographer and the reporter parked in the car park
all day near to her car.
An Act to make stalking and other harassment an offence was introduced in
1997. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 says that: ‘A person must not
pursue a course of conduct (a) which amounts to harassment of another, and (b)
which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment of the other’
(http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1997/1997040.htm). A defence is that the
conduct is reasonable or that it was pursued for the purpose of preventing or
detecting crime. An offence is punishable by up to six months in prison or a fine.
Case studies
The introduction of the Human Rights Act means that a number of celebrities and
others have attempted to gain relief for alleged intrusions or invasions of privacy.
Carter-Ruck, high-profile media lawyers based in London claim on their website to
being involved in ‘a long line of ground-breaking confidence/privacy-related actions
. . . on behalf of celebrity and other high profile clients. For obvious reasons the
majority of such clients cannot be named here, but they have included pop stars and
members of the royal family as well as members of the general public’
(http://www.carter-ruck.com/articles/index.html (accessed May 2006)).
While the right to privacy suggests that this should be something we can all
expect, the right to freedom of expression means the two have to be balanced and
the courts are often called upon to decide when the press’s right to publish is being
muzzled or when they are being overly intrusive.
There have been some key cases since the introduction of the Human Rights Act,
which have helped to develop the law in this area. Usually these have been a mix of
changes in the applications of laws of confidence and data protection.
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Case studies 107
Princess Caroline of Monaco

The most significant case, in that it was a ruling from The European Court of
Human Rights, concerned Princess Caroline of Monaco. The Princess was pho-
tographed by paparazzi while out shopping and on holiday and these pictures were
published in German magazines. The Princess had previously tried to prevent pic-
tures of her being published when these had been taken on private occasions but the
German constitutional court took the view that she was a contemporary public
figure who should expect pictures of herself in public places to be published, even if
they were of her daily life.
The case then went to the European Court which overturned the decision of the
German court, ruling that there was a distinction between reporting facts about
politicians and the reporting of the private life of an individual with no official
standing, particularly if the pictures made no contribution to the public interest.
The court considers that the public does not have a legitimate interest in knowing where [Princess
Caroline] is and how she behaves generally in her private life – even if she appears in places that
cannot always be described as secluded and despite the fact that she is well known to the public.
Even if such a public interest exists, as does a commercial interest of the magazines in publishing
these photos . . . those interests must, in the court’s view, yield to the applicant’s right to the
effective protection of her private life. (Rozenberg 2004b)
This decision is highly significant as it is the strongest ruling yet on the level of
privacy a celebrity can expect to be supported by the European Court.
Naomi Campbell
The next case involved the international supermodel Naomi Campbell. This went
all the way to the House of Lords for a decision and was the first privacy case so to
do since the introduction of the Human Rights Act. Consequently the court’s ruling
is important. The Daily Mirror, which covered the story, had found that Naomi
Campbell was secretly attending meetings of Narcotics Anonymous, despite denying
publicly that she took drugs.
Five elements were identified at the court case:
1. the fact of Ms Campbell’s drug addiction;
2. the fact that she was receiving treatment for that addiction;
3. the fact that she was receiving treatment at Narcotics Anonymous;
4. details of that treatment and her reaction to it; and
5. surreptitiously obtaining photographs of her emerging from a treatment
session.
Ms Campbell agreed that as she had previously publicly denied using drugs, the
disclosure of (1) and (2) was justified in the public interest. However, she com-
plained that the disclosure of (3) to (5) was unjustified.
In March 2002, trial judge Morland J had found that there was a breach of con-
fidence and had awarded compensatory and aggravated damages of £3,500. In
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October 2002, the Court of Appeal allowed the newspaper’s appeal on the grounds
that the publication of the information in categories (3) to (5) was ‘within the
margin of editorial judgment’ of the newspaper. On 6 May 2004, by a majority of
3 to 2, the House of Lords allowed Naomi Campbell’s appeal and restored the trial
judge’s award.
There were two, related, issues to consider: whether there was a tort of privacy
and how this conflicted with the right to freedom of expression.
The Lords decided unanimously that the cause of action in breach of confidence
should be expanded to provide a remedy for privacy invasion as, following the
introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, the law of confidence had absorbed
the values protected by article 8 (privacy). The court decided that in any claim based
on the publication of private information, there should be an objective test of ‘rea-
sonable expectation of privacy’. This sidelined the ‘offensiveness’ test. However, all
the judges agreed that this test should be applied to a person in the position of the
claimant. This could mean that even someone in a public street could expect
privacy, the judges agreed, although the precise limit of this policy was not made
clear. Although the House did not depart from its previous decision that there is no
‘general tort of invasion of privacy’, any publication of private information will be
potentially actionable and the values of ‘human autonomy and dignity’ are now
directly protected.
In discussing the balance between privacy and freedom of expression, the House
felt that neither right takes precedence over the other. It was recognised both that
some types of speech are of greater value than others and that there are different
degrees of privacy.
When it came to applying this rule, however, Lords Nicholls and Hoffmann felt
that the publications were minor intrusions into privacy and that the court should
recognise a degree of ‘journalistic latitude’. The majority, Lady Hale and Lords
Hope and Carswell, believed that The Daily Mirror had gone too far and that the
material was too intrusive; they felt particularly that disclosing details of therapeutic
treatment could have harmful effects on the complainant and that although the case
was close to the line, publication was not justified. Lawyers involved in the case later
offered the following advice to journalists:
We suggest that the following is the correct approach:
In relation to a proposed publication it is necessary to consider whether it contains information
in relation to which any person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.
If it does, it is then necessary to consider whether a ‘public interest’ defence is available in
relation to each element of private information.
If such a defence does not apply to each element it is necessary to consider how private the
information is and what type of speech is involved. If information is ‘intimate’, it is likely that the
publication must have some ‘political and democratic’ value to justify publication.
Photographs should be considered separately. If they depict humiliating or embarrassing events
or have been obtained surreptitiously, their publication is likely to be difficult to justify.
(Hugh Tomlinson QC and Mark Thomson 2004: http://www.carter-ruck.com/articles/280504_New
ModelPrivacy.html (accessed 19/7/06))
JOUR_C06.QXP 8/2/07 10:51 Page 109
Case studies 109
Loreena McKennitt
Another case that has developed the law of privacy involves the Canadian folk
singer Loreena McKennitt. A book written by Niema Ash, a friend of hers, Travels
with Loreena McKennitt, intruded on her privacy and was false or misleading in
parts, according to the singer. Judgment was handed down on 22 December 2005
after granting an injunction restraining publication in October 2005. Mr Justice
Eady decided (following the recent Princess Caroline judgment):
(a) that all persons, including those in the public eye, are entitled to significant protection of
privacy, not just in relation to photographs but also other information;
(b) that disclosure of information of relationships with others can be protected even if this
occurs in public and even if the other person asserts his/her right of free speech;
(c) that truth or falsity of the private information is not relevant;
(d) that the public interest defence should be subject to careful scrutiny and requires a high
degree of misbehaviour and not ‘mere peccadilloes of celebrities’;
(e) in matters of privacy the Courts should be slow to allow public domain as a defence, and it
is permissible to allow a controlled release of private information.
(http://www.carter-ruck.com/recentwork/McKennitt_SummaryJ_03Jan06.html (accessed
19/7/06))
This judgment identifies (and clarifies the law’s view on) a number of issues. The
first new development is that public disclosure does not free journalists from any
obligation to respect privacy. Just because a confidence may have been shared with
friends, for instance, does not mean it is then in the public domain to be shared with
all. The law should continue to provide protection until there is nothing left to
protect, said the judge.
The second element that clarifies debate about truth and falsehood is very
welcome. A complainant seeking relief for privacy need no longer detail which parts
of ‘a long and garbled story’ were accepted as true, and which were said to be false.
Advice on the definition of public interest is also welcome. This makes it clear that
a high degree of misbehaviour is required in order to reasonably publish ‘in the
public interest’. This differs quite markedly from the judgment in the Gary Flitcroft
case, detailed later on. However, this is not the first time there has been a different
approach to public interest, for example, the observation of J. Gummow in SK & F
v Department of Community Services [1990] FSR 617, 663:
An examination of the recent English decisions shows that the so-called ‘public interest’ defence is not
so much a rule of law as an invitation to judicial idiosyncrasy by deciding each case on an ad hoc basis
as to whether, on the facts overall, it is better to respect or to override the obligation of confidence.
(cited in http://www.carter-ruck.com/recentwork/McKennitt_KeyExtracts_03Jan06.html (accessed
19/7/06))
Ewan McGregor
Film actor Ewan McGregor was successful in gaining an injunction against photo
agency Eliot Press SARL, preventing publication of photographs taken of his children
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on a private hotel beach while on holiday in Mauritius. The Court ordered an assess-
ment for damages for breach of confidence, compensation under the Data Protection
Act, and if appropriate, damages for invasion of privacy to be assessed.
A v B (Gary Flitcroft)
A (the footballer Gary Flitcroft) sought to prevent publication in B (The People) of
kiss-and-tell stories from two young women C and D with whom he had had affairs
at different times. Flitcroft did not want his wife and family to find out about the
affairs. He sought the injunction to prevent publication on the grounds that there
should be confidentiality between him and the young women. Mr Justice Jack
decided that this was an invasion of the footballer’s privacy, that he should be able
to count on confidentiality and that there was no public interest in publishing. The
People appealed. Lord Woolf, sitting with Lord Justice Laws and Lord Justice Dyson
overturned the decision saying that the footballer could be named, as the ban was
an unjustified interference with press freedom. Lord Woolf went on to make it clear
that there was a public interest defence in publishing what was of interest to the
public. He explained that if newspapers did not publish what was of interest to
people, they would soon go out of business and this would have an adverse affect
on press freedom and therefore the public interest. It would be a foolish journalist
who felt that this gave carte blanche to publish anything that interested the public,
but it certainly slowed the moves towards privacy law by the back door.
Douglas and Zeta Jones v Hello!

One of the most important cases in terms of its perception for the media is the
Michael Douglas and Catharine Zeta Jones v Hello! magazine case. The Hollywood
stars had signed a contract with OK! magazine to allow approved pictures of their
wedding to be published in the magazine. A photographer took clandestine pictures
at the wedding and sold these to Hello! magazine for publication before OK!
Previous rulings in the 1800s had established that the publication of pictures taken
in breach of an obligation of confidence could be prevented and as the Douglases
had made it clear that the function was private and pictures should not be taken,
that was the case at this wedding. The point about confidentiality was quickly
agreed. But was this a breach of privacy? In the end, although Lord Justice Sedley
thought there was now a tort of privacy in law, the other justices equivocated and
whilst judgment was for Douglas and Zeta Jones, this was on the grounds of confi-
dentiality rather than that there had been a tort of privacy.
Anna Ford
The TV broadcaster Anna Ford sought permission for a judicial review of a PCC
decision that there was no intrusion on her privacy by the publication of pictures of
her and her partner on a public, but secluded, beach abroad. Permission was refused
by Silber J on the basis of the ‘broad discretion’ that should be given to regulators
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as they are better equipped to resolve such difficult matters as the balancing of con-
flicting rights.
CCTV footage
Another important case concerned the use of CCTV footage. A local council
allowed footage from a CCTV camera of a man walking along a public street
holding a knife to be transmitted on television. In fact the man, Mr Peck, was
severely depressed and had slashed his wrists in a suicide attempt. He complained
to the ITC and the BSC, which upheld his complaint, but the PCC dismissed the
complaint. The European Court of Human Rights upheld his claim that his article
8 rights to privacy had been infringed and concluded that the UK was in breach of
their article 13 requirement to provide effective remedies.
These developments within the law of confidence and privacy have given plenty
of encouragement to lawyers to continue pursuing privacy cases for rich, high-
profile clients desperate to keep control of parts of their lives once they have become
famous.
Discussion about privacy and its meaning are discussed in a number of books, but Julie C. Innes
(1992) Privacy, Intimacy and Isolation (Oxford University Press, Oxford) is one of the best and
most useful. Sissela Bok (1982) Secrets (OUP, Oxford) also sheds some interesting light on the
concept. Two books bring the subject more closely to the media. Raymond Wacks (1995) Privacy
and Press Freedom (Blackstone Press, London) covers the subject fairly fully, but for a more up-
to-date look at some of the key cases in the UK and Europe, Joshua Rozenberg (2004a) Privacy
and the Press (OUP, London) is both readable and informative.
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Chapter 7
GATH E R I N G TH E N EWS
This chapter discusses a number of the ethical issues involved in

gathering the news, including:
• Straightforward means of gathering news

• Misrepresentation and clandestine methods of getting information
• Dealing with sources of information
In Chapter 3, four key elements of ethical concern were identified: gathering the
news; presenting the news; guaranteeing the quality of the news provided and
ensuring standards. These four will all be dealt with in depth over the next four
chapters or so.
The first of these are of direct concern to the reporter, however junior. There is
a view driven by television and the movies, that ethical issues are only ever matters
of major concern, but the reverse is closer to the truth. Ethical issues arise every day,
often concerning small questions. Even when there are major issues of ethical
concern, they often start as small issues and I doubt whether Andrew Gilligan was
aware of the ethical nightmare he was unleashing when he woke one morning to do
a 6.07 two-way for the BBC’s Today programme.
Some of the key decisions reporters need to make concern how they will gather
information for their stories. This concerns both the quality of the information and
the method of obtaining it, including concerns about intrusion and truth, accuracy
and objectivity dealt with in earlier chapters.
Straightforward means
Straightforward means concerns the way that stories are gathered – how the source
is approached and asked about the information. The NUJ Code says: ‘A Journalist
shall obtain information, photographs and illustrations only by straightforward
means’ (National Union of Journalists Rulebook, 2005). The BBC has no clauses on
misrepresentation. Despite its lengthy clauses on subterfuge, the very idea that one
of its journalists might pretend to be something else in order to get a story seems to
have escaped them. The PCC has several clauses covering the area: clause 8,
Hospitals, says that: ‘Journalists must identify themselves and obtain permission
from a responsible executive before entering non-public areas of hospitals or similar
institutions to pursue enquiries. The restrictions on intruding into privacy are par-
ticularly relevant to enquiries about individuals in hospitals or similar institutions’
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Misrepresentation 113
(PCC Code of Practice 2005) while clause 10, Clandestine Devices and Subterfuge
says ‘The Press must not seek to obtain or publish material acquired by using hidden
cameras or clandestine listening devices; or by intercepting private or mobile tele-
phone calls, messages or emails; or by unauthorised removal of documents or
photographs. Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge can generally be justified
only in the public interest and then only when the material cannot be obtained by
other means’ (ibid.). Things are different for the broadcaster. Although the NUJ
Code applies to broadcast journalists, it is Ofcom that protects individuals in this
area. The Ofcom content code says that ‘Factual programme makers should not
normally obtain or seek information or pictures through misrepresentation or
deception, except where the disclosure is reasonably believed to serve an overriding
public interest.’
Misrepresentation
One major form of subterfuge used by reporters is misrepresentation, posing as

some thing or someone other than a news reporter. This could mean posing as a
police officer (illegal) or a doctor, social worker, or some other person who has
regular access to people’s homes or places of business.
Two particularly prominent cases in the UK illustrate the problems journalists
face in using subterfuge as a method of gathering information. In one, the feminist
writer, Germaine Greer, offered to take homeless people into her home. A Mail on
Sunday reporter, Martin Hennessey, dressed as a ‘down and out’ and took her up
on her offer. After three days he wrote about his experiences. The PCC’s Privacy
Commissioner, Professor Robert Pinker, said in his adjudication: ‘Journalists should
not generally obtain or seek to obtain information and pictures through misrepre-
sentation or subterfuge.’ The paper’s editor had argued that the method was
justified as ‘this was the only way in which the article could have been written’.
This example raises two points. The first is whether there is a justification in
using non-straightforward methods if the story is in the public interest. If the story
were, for instance, exposing corruption or criminal activity, should a reporter feel
justified in using such methods to get the story if there were no other way? The
second point that requires discussion is at what stage does a story become ‘in the
public interest’? Does a story about how Germaine Greer treated a ‘down and out’
fit within the category of public interest? While there might be a story in testing
whether her claim to offer a bed to any ‘down and out’ was true, or only hypocrisy,
once the reporter had established that she meant what she said, surely he should
have withdrawn and not invaded Ms Greer’s privacy, using non-straightforward
means to obtain a story that was arguably not in the public interest.
In the other prominent case, which was reported in PCC Report No. 33 (1996),
a freelance reporter entered a school to talk to pupils and staff about a story con-
cerning a female pupil’s relationship with a teacher. The reporter allegedly claimed
she was the cousin of the pupil. Was the story in the public interest? Did it there-
fore justify the invasion of privacy or was it an unnecessary subterfuge? The PCC
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114 7 • Gathering the news
decided it was misrepresentation and upheld the complaint. In doing so, the
Commission also clarified clause 12(ii) of its Code which the PCC claimed it had
interpreted as applying only to children under the age of 16. The actual clause says:
‘Children should not be approached or photographed while at school without the
permission of the school authorities.’
In another case the PCC dealt with in 2005, a reporter for the Sunday Telegraph
posed as a client to discover whether a printing firm owned by Saudi Arabians printed
the British National Party’s newspaper. The reporter later phoned the firm to confirm
what he had learned undercover, which the complainant claimed proved that sub-
terfuge was unnecessary, but the PCC did not uphold the complaint, saying that while
other means might occasionally be available in similar circumstances, a case would not
be upheld where there were ‘reasonable grounds for concluding that pursuing other
means would compromise the ability of reporters to investigate matters subsequently’.
The PCC also felt it was acceptable where the subterfuge was not serious and
caused little harm (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=MjE2Ng==
(accessed 13/6/06)).
Utilitarianism works well in these circumstances, guiding us to consider the con-
sequences of the act of subterfuge. The effect of using subterfuge is that the reporter
does something immoral (i.e., lying), and the subject of the report is usually
damaged, held up to ridicule or accused of wrongdoing. Only the fact that the
public ought to know more about the activities of such people justifies this behav-
iour. Providing the public interest is served, it may be acceptable to lie and deceive,
as long as subterfuge is the only way of achieving this end. It is important that
reporters and their editors remember that the subterfuge they use to obtain material
is immoral – the mere act of lying is regarded as immoral by many, regardless of
whether the motive was good or the consequences beneficial. However, many others
also believe that lying that leads to beneficial effects is morally acceptable.
Utilitarianists could support the use of subterfuge, provided the consequences
really are to produce a story that is strongly in the public interest. Often, of course,
this claim to serve the public interest is just a smokescreen to cover the fact that the
story is used because it increases circulation figures. The public interest defence was
used by the Sunday Mirror when, in 1994, it published photographs of Diana,
Princess of Wales working out in a private gym. Using subterfuge is extremely dan-
gerous because once the principle is accepted that lying and deceit can be justified
by loyalty to the public interest, it is only a short step to justifying it through the
reporter’s loyalty to the editor or proprietor. In other words, it is but a small step
from lying to get a story which is important because it is in the public interest to
lying to get a story which is important because it keeps the reporter’s paper from
bankruptcy or holds its top position in the market. Both can be justified on the basis
of loyalty, but whereas one may be acceptable to the public, the other may not.
Another case where the PCC did accept that there was an important point of
public interest was when The People and the Sunday Mirror separately managed to
gain entry to Old Trafford, the football ground of Manchester United, as stewards
with only minimal security checks at the time of the so-called anti-terrorist ‘ring of
steel’. The stewards are responsible for ensuring weapons are not brought into the
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Clandestine listening devices and cameras 115
ground. Controlled Event Solutions complained to the PCC that the stories
used subterfuge, but the PCC rejected the complaint saying it was in the
public interest (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=MjEzOQ==
One of the best known users of subterfuge is the News of the World’s investiga-
tive editor, Mahmoud Mazur. Mazur has set up elaborate subterfuges involving his
dressing as an Arab businessman on a number of occasions, notably to get a story
about the Countess of Wessex using her royal connections to bolster her public
relations business. The scandal following the story was sufficient to oblige her to
withdraw from the business. He also, controversially, offered England manager
Sven Goran Eriksson a new job after the 2006 World Cup, prompting an early finish
to his contract after World Cup commitments and the appointment of a new
manager, two years early.
Clandestine listening devices and cameras
Clandestine listening devices, interception of telephone calls and the use of hidden
cameras are other ways to access information that might otherwise not be available.
There are two main uses for such devices: to clandestinely record or film events that
would otherwise remain secret and to record events involving the reporter as evi-
dence or to provide pictures or film. The use of pictures and film taken secretly for
broadcast are dealt with in more detail in Chapter 10. What is of interest in this
section is clandestine recording and filming in order to get information that could
not be obtained by other means.
The PCC bans the use of hidden cameras and listening devices. It also bars the
interception of private communications and the unauthorised removal of documents
and photographs. However, there is public interest defence to the use of these
deceits because it may be that the only way to get information in a story that is of
major public interest is by recording secretly. Only a very small number of com-
plaints are made to the PCC about clandestine devices, typically fewer than one per
cent. Only five were adjudicated up to June 2006. Two of these involved secretly
taping telephone conversations. In one, a complaint dealt with in 1996, a woman
complained that a telephone call between her and her husband had been recorded
without her knowledge or consent (but with her ex-husband’s knowledge) (PCC
Report 35 1996: 6). The PCC upheld the complaint, including the recording of the
telephone conversation. Later, in 2000, the PCC adjudicated in another case where
a reporter had taped conversations with the complainant without her knowledge
and consent. The PCC said it ‘did not view the recording of telephone conversations
as involving the use of a “clandestine listening device” ’ (http://www.pcc.org.uk/
cases/adjudicated.html?article=MTc5Mg== (accessed on 13/6/06)). This is still a
troubled area of debate. Recording calls you are making for your own use is not
illegal but there may be copyright problems and there certainly might be ethical
problems if the tape is used as a journalistic artifact. However, despite regularly
recording conversations with sources, the media had a field day when it was learnt
JOUR_C07.QXP 8/2/07 10:52 Page 116
that Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair had been recording telephone
conversations with ministers. The Guardian came to his defence with a leader con-
demning the ‘media humbug over phone recording’. However, its news item
followed the pack in taking Sir Ian to task for recording a conversation with the
Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, who was said to be ‘incredibly cross and very
disappointed’, describing Sir Ian’s behaviour as ‘unethical and discourteous’ (Dodd
2006) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1729602,00.html).
The other complaints concerned the taking of photographs, so there is little guid-
ance from the PCC about the use of hidden microphones or recorders, but there
would be no justification for using either, without a strong public interest defence.
If hiding a microphone, or ‘wearing a wire’ as we know it from the movies, were the
only way to get evidence for a public interest story, then it might well be justifiable.
Hospitals
Hospitals are identified in the PCC Code of Practice as being of such significance
that they require a clause of their own. This follows the Gorden Kaye case, when
the actor was badly injured during storms in London in 1989 and journalists from
the Sport newspaper infiltrated his hospital room to interview him even though he
was barely conscious. The clause says that journalists must identify themselves and
obtain permission before entering hospitals or similar institutions. There is a public
interest defence around this clause, implying that a journalist could enter a hospital
without permission, or in disguise if there was a public interest reason. Such a
defence would almost certainly need to be about the hospital itself rather than any
of its patients. It might be arguable to enter the hospital to check out the cleanliness
of the kitchens as a follow-up to a complaint, for instance, but to interview a
severely injured patient is likely to breach the code.
It is not entirely clear exactly what the PCC means by ‘similar institutions’ but
there are a wide range of public buildings that journalists may feel the need to enter
from time to time. Public buildings generally fall into three categories. These first are
those that are open to the public, such as libraries, public halls, sports centres, art
galleries, museums and swimming baths. These may include a number of buildings
that are privately owned, but that are routinely open to the public: shopping centres,
for instance. These will be accessible to journalists, although they may have specific
closing times and there may be some private areas where access is limited. However,
even in the private office sections of such buildings, there would not be any ethical
limitation with a journalist seeking entry in order to interview a member of staff.
However, the staff in such a building would have the right to escort a journalist
from the premises for an excessive intrusion.
The second category are those that are owned by government or local authorities
but are used for offices or workspaces for staff. Whilst these may have a small public
area (benefit offices, housing departments and so on) the bulk of the space will be
for officers. There is nothing to prevent a journalist seeking entry here to speak to
an officer, but most public buildings these days have security devices to prevent
strangers entering and so it is probably easiest to ask for someone at the reception
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Harassment 117
area unless there is a very good reason for attempting to enter the staff-only areas.
If a journalist were found in the staff-only area, it is likely they would be escorted
from the premises and any future attempt to interview someone might not be well
received.
The third category are buildings that are largely used by the public, but are not
open access in the sense of the first category. These include hospitals, but also
schools, colleges and universities. Most schools now take security very seriously.
Colleges and universities are following suit but find it more difficult. It is almost
impossible for an adult to enter a school without gaining permission, but journal-
ists should in any case think twice before attempting to enter a school without
permission as the PCC or Ofcom are not likely to find it acceptable. It is not accept-
able to interview pupils without permission of an adult and if the head teacher or
other teachers have already refused to speak, then there is not much point in ram-
paging around the school trying to harass them into commenting. Universities are
more open. Most tend to secure sensitive areas, more to ensure expensive equipment
is not stolen than to prevent contact with staff or students. Entering general areas,
such as common rooms and entrance halls is generally fairly easy. Entering class-
rooms would mean joining the class, but otherwise, it is unlikely that you would be
noticed. Again the worst that could probably happen is that the journalist would be
escorted from the premises.
Harassment
Entering buildings to talk to people or waiting outside to approach them as they

arrive or leave is acceptable behaviour, but not if it extends to harassment. The
PCC, NUJ, Ofcom and BBC all have specific clauses banning harassment. It is also
potentially illegal under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. According to the
Act, ‘A person must not pursue a course of conduct (a) which amounts to harass-
ment of another, and (b) which he knows or ought to know amounts to harassment
of another’ (Carey and Sanders 2004: 130). This leaves the definition of harassment
open, but it does not have to be physical: an approach for interview would be suf-
ficient. However, to be called ‘harassment’, the behaviour would have to involve
such approaches on at least two, probably more occasions. No journalist has yet
faced a charge under the Act, which was designed to stop stalkers, but it is worth
remembering that it is potentially illegal. In ethical terms, any person who turns
down an invitation to be interviewed, could claim to be harassed if persistent repeat
requests are made, or if a journalist refuses to leave private premises or continues to
make telephone calls after being asked to desist. It is difficult to say at what point a
firm approach becomes harassment, and it may be that a second approach to
someone who has already refused may be appropriate if the circumstances have
changed; but a journalist really needs to have a good justification because a second
approach and a third or subsequent approach is asking to be accused of harassment.
Taking pictures without permission could also be construed as harassment, if
done persistently. Taking pictures of subjects who do not want their pictures taken
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can be difficult. If they are on private property, then that clearly breaches most
codes of practice, and photographs should not normally be taken. This is somewhat
of a grey area. Until 2004, the PCC said that using long-lens photography to take
pictures of people in private places was unacceptable. This implied that it was
acceptable to take pictures of them in such places, provided normal lenses were
used, so the Code was changed to bar pictures in private places, that is, places where
there could be a reasonable expectation of privacy. The PCC has made it clear
through its adjudications that this would include walled or hedged gardens, homes,
restaurants and hotels – but there are grey areas. A woman complained to the PCC
about the Mail on Sunday. She had agreed to an interview, but said she had not
agreed to pictures as she was involved in a witness protection programme. The
paper had taken a picture of her on her driveway and she complained that this was
a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Commission
decided that the driveway was not a place where there was reasonable expectation
of privacy, even though it was clear that the picture had been taken from the
roadway. This would almost certainly have required a lens that was to some degree
a telephoto (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudicated.html?article=MjE4Mw==
Subterfuge and pictures taken in a private place can also be justified by the public
interest. The News of the World took pictures of Carole Caplin, a close friend and con-
fidante of Cherie Blair, in a hotel and in her gym. The newspaper said they had reports
that Caplin abused her friendship for gain and that subterfuge was required to pursue the
story. The PCC rejected a complaint saying that the case concerned Caplin’s work, not
her private life. The pictures were taken in places where she had a reasonable expecta-
tion of privacy, but that there was a public interest in taking and publishing them as they
showed her engaging in professional negotiations (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cases/adjudi-
cated.html?article=MjE3NQ== (accessed 13/6/06)).
Sources
Dealing with sources is one of the most difficult parts of journalism. As pre-
viously discussed, a journalist owes a loyalty to a contact or source. But reporters
also have a loyalty to the audience and that means giving consumers enough
information to make their own judgements about the trustworthiness of the
sources the journalist is using. It may also mean using more than one source in
order to confirm the same point. Since the Hutton report and the BBC’s own
Neil report, the BBC has changed its rules on sources and now tells its journal-
ists: ‘the BBC should continue to report stories based on a single source but only
where the story is one of significant public interest and the correct procedures
have been followed’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/pdf/neil_report.pdf
The journalist should do his or her best to ensure that the consumer gets a good
range of information about the source in order to enable them to make a decision
about the trustworthiness of the source. All sources will have an angle, some motive
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Sources 119
for agreeing to be the source of the story. Often this will be obvious – it improves
their public image, or the image of some company, club or organisation with which
they are involved. However, sometimes their motive is not so clear and the reporter
must make every effort to try to show that to the consumer. The reporter also needs
to be sure that the source is providing information that is genuine. Many sources
like to build up the information which they are offering or even make it up
altogether. Not only should the journalist do his or her best to test the information
but he or she should also give the consumer as much information as possible in
order to help them come to their own conclusion. Anonymous sources need to be
used sometimes, but it is much better to name a source and provide details about
their situation so that consumers can be more sure about their motivation.
Protection of sources
Many codes of conduct include clauses on the need for journalists to protect confi-
dential sources. Much rubbish is talked about confidential sources. Reporters are
not like doctors, obliged to keep confidential all that is told to them. Indeed, the very
opposite is true. Journalists are expected to reveal confidences and report everything
they are told. Occasionally, however, it is necessary to get information from sources
who would be put at considerable risk if it were known that they had revealed what
they knew. They might, for instance, lose their jobs or perhaps face even harsher
punishment. These informants might be able to help a reporter to track down a
story without the reporter having to use the information actually given by the
informant. In this instance, a reporter might decide to guarantee confidentiality to a
source. Only if the reporter has given his or her promise, or implied a promise, does
the matter become an issue of ethical honour. If reporters are to be reliable and to
be seen as trustworthy to the reader, they should also be trustworthy when they give
a promise. No reporter should give this promise lightly.
In some countries reporters can be instructed by a court to reveal a confidence
and failure to do so can result in severe punishment. Several British journalists have
gone to prison in the past for failing to reveal a source. Some countries, such as
Denmark, have laws that prevent a journalist revealing a confidential source. This
can work in a reverse fashion, allowing a journalist who has not sourced a story
properly to pretend that the contact is strong but that he or she is unable to reveal
the source as to do so would be to breach the protection of a confidentiality promise.
Protecting confidential sources has a place in most codes. Deontologists say that
the rightness of an act doesn’t depend on its motives or consequences but purely on
the nature of the act itself. You are obliged to keep a promise by the very fact that
that is what defines a promise: it is a pledge one keeps regardless of circumstance or
consequence. Deontologists would say that it is no good promising to keep a contact
secret and then telling a court, simply because to refuse to do so would mean a jail
sentence. If you promise someone confidentiality, you must stick by that. Since it is
also in the reporter’s interest to stick by this promise, revealing sources is not some-
thing that happens regularly. In one celebrated UK case, Bill Goodwin won his
appeal to the European Court of Human Rights over the issue.
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Case study 7.1 Protecting sources

Whilst working as a trainee reporter for The Engineer, Bill Goodwin was contacted by
a source who gave him some useful material about the financial dealings of a major
company which suggested that the company was not as successful as it would have the
market believe. Acting like a good journalist, he wrote the story and then contacted the
company for its comments. The company refused to comment and, shortly after, The
Engineer received a court injunction preventing it from publishing the story and
demanding to know the name of the source.
The NUJ and The Engineer supported Bill Goodwin when he refused to name the
source. The Engineer paid his £5,000 fine whilst the NUJ helped him to fight through
the courts before going to the European Court of Human Rights in April 1996 which
ruled that Goodwin’s human rights had been violated. This leaves the government in a
difficult position but it has made it clear it has no intention of changing section 10 of
the Contempt of Court Act 1981 which says: ‘No court may require a person to dis-
close, nor is any person guilty of contempt of court for refusing to disclose the source
of information contained in a publication for which he is responsible, unless it is estab-
lished to the satisfaction of the court that it is necessary in the interests of justice or
national security or for the prevention of disorder and crime.’ Lord Mackay, the Lord
Chancellor, told the House of Lords on 17 April 1996: ‘Amending the legislation is
unnecessary to give effect to this judgment.’
These cases are not always easy for journalists to fight. Since the court has the right
to insist on disclosure ‘in the interests of justice’, the journalist is forced to show that
disclosure is not in the interests of justice – and this is not always easy. In the Bill
Goodwin case, none of the company’s assertions to the court could be challenged
without revealing the name of the source – the very thing Goodwin was fighting
against. In an article for The Journalist, the NUJ’s magazine, Goodwin wrote about his
court experience:
The source must be an ex-employee motivated by revenge, I was told. The infor-
mation was so sensitive, the courts decided, that unless the informant was
unmasked, the company could be forced into liquidation and 400 people would lose
their jobs. It was hogwash. But I could not challenge any of these assumptions,
based on the flimsiest of evidence, without giving away the source’s identity. And
because the hearings were ‘interlocutory’ we could not test Tetra’s hysterical asser-
tions in the witness box.
Goodwin’s case is an important one in that he was upholding the confidentiality

of the source despite not having promised to do so. The promise, in this case, was
implied and therefore as binding. The wording of the NUJ Code of Conduct is that
‘confidential sources’ shall be protected. The implication is that there are sources
who are not confidential.
Much of the moral decision-making in this area hinges around the making of
specific promises as well as a general method of working that would mean keeping
names of sources private. Since a good portion of a journalist’s worth is his or her
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Sources 121
sources, it makes good professional sense to keep some sources of information secret
as far as possible.
However, this is different from promising to keep a source secret. This is not
always as difficult as it seems. Whistle-blowers are often reticent about revealing
their names. They will give a journalist the story, but will refuse to give a name.
Since the journalist now knows the information and is now only looking for a way
of guaranteeing the information, it is easier to make a decision about promising to
keep the name secret. There are times when keeping a source secret may not be the
moral thing to do: information from someone who is about to commit a major
crime or threaten life is information that may well need to be passed on to the auth-
orities and a journalist may have to decide that he or she will breach any
undertaking to keep the name of such a person secret. This is one of the reasons why
this moral tussle must remain in the hands of the journalist and not the law. Only
the journalist is in a position to explore the motives of the informant and decide
whether his or her identity should be kept secret. The law is too unwieldy a weapon
to use in this kind of decision-making. There is much agreement in the industry over
confidentiality. The BBC says that promises of confidentiality given to a source must
be honoured. It recognises that such promises may put the journalist into conflict
with the court and recommends that journalists should not enter into such under-
takings lightly. The BBC recommends a number of general principles which are
good advice for all journalists:
• The possibility of agreeing from the very beginning with a contributor not to
use his or her name unless forced to do so by a court.
• It may be possible to establish a source’s authenticity without knowing his or
her name or having any way to find it out.
• No document, whether paper or electronic, should identify the source.
The last point is extremely important as the court can demand the production of
documents, notebooks, tapes and videos relating to the case. It is always good prac-
tice not to keep records of confidential sources and discussions alongside ordinary
notes. Any such notes you are forced to keep should be destroyed as soon as poss-
ible as the court may order their confiscation and destroying material after such an
order is a criminal offence in itself. The name or ways of identifying the source
should not be shared with colleagues who may be ordered to reveal it.
The NUJ Code of Conduct says that ‘a journalist shall protect confidential
sources of information’ while the PCC says that journalists have a moral obligation
to protect confidential sources of information.
One area of potential difficulty is the keeping of a source secret from the jour-
nalist’s editor. The promise made to a source is one made by the journalist and not
by the editor. The editor is not necessarily bound in to the promise. It would be a
poor editor who did not support a reporter, but if faced with court and the possibility
of serious legal action against the paper or broadcast station, an editor might well
take a different view on what is right to do, if only because the loyalties are very dif-
ferent. My view would be that journalists need not tell their editor the name of the
source, although they might well give the editor some detail of that person’s position
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and if the editor does not find that acceptable, then he or she should not use the story.
The editor is certainly not in a position to demand the name of the source after pub-
lication just because problems have developed. The BBC takes a different view. Whilst
the Editorial Guidelines agree that the BBC should take care to ensure that when
anonymity is promised it can be honoured, the guidelines also say that ‘the relevant
editor has the right to be told their identity’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editori-
alguidelines/edguide/accuracy/anonymoussource.shtml (accessed 18/7/06)). This is
part of the fall-out from the Hutton report and it was one of the recommendations
of the Neil report that editors should be informed. The BBC’s rules are clear that if
there is any problem with this, then the information may not be broadcast. In other
words, it is a condition of BBC employment that a reporter can only make a promise
to a source that makes it clear the reporter will have to tell the relevant editor who
the source is. This should not normally be a problem provided everyone is clear about
it right from the beginning.
Note-taking
Note-taking is an important attribute of a good journalist and is central to guaran-
teeing accuracy. The Hutton report underlined what can happen when a reporter is
not certain exactly what the source has said, and the BBC has laid down very strict
rules about note-taking following that, making it clear that conversations should
normally be recorded (http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/pdf/neil_report.pdf
Good journalists keep accurate notes and can then show that their stories are
supported by the sources they approached. It is still generally considered in the UK
that the best way to do this is with fast, accurate shorthand, and most good jour-
nalism courses still teach shorthand. However, the UK is one of the few countries to
do this and so there are obviously other ways to ensure an accurate note. Changing
styles of reporting have made this easier. Back in the days when news reports were
often verbatim recordings of speeches often of several thousand words, shorthand
was essential. T.A. Reed, writing in 1876 about journalism and the need for 120
words a minute shorthand explained:
Let it be distinctly understood that an occasional trial for one or two minutes is valueless as a
criterion of speed and accuracy. Nothing less than half an hour’s continuous writing should be
regarded as a satisfactory test; and even this should not give confidence if any considerable
difficulty is experienced in reading the shorthand characters. (Reed 1876: 21)
Shorthand writers these days need not be so skilled. Journalism students are
required to reach 100 words a minute by the National Council for the Training of
Journalists, but they need only maintain this speed for four minutes. Few stories
these days are longer than a few hundred words and the requirement for verbatim
reporting of long speeches has virtually disappeared.
Broadcasters, of course, rely on audio or video recordings. Many print journal-
ists also use audio recorders but, when writing stories against a tight deadline, using
a recorder is difficult. The tape or digital file needs to be replayed, which takes time.
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Also recorders are highly fallible. Microphones fail to pick up what seemed like a
strong voice, batteries can run out at vital moments and key words can be distorted
by extraneous noises. Audio recorders though can be useful back-up, providing evi-
dence to support that a particular comment was made, in case of later dispute.
Modern digital recorders allow reporters to store interviews on computer, which are
much easier than the boxes of tapes that we used to be obliged to keep, but broad-
casters should beware of using recordings taken for note-taking for broadcast. The
BBC warns its staff that any intention to use recordings taken as notes for broad-
cast needs to be referred to the controller of editorial policy.
Reporters without shorthand tend to develop a way of writing longhand that is quick,
usually using some kind of short forms. Electronic note-taking is also possible in PDAs
and pocket computers, although these are still fairly slow and cumbersome. They have
the advantage of being easy to transfer to most standard word-processing packages.
Bribes, corruption and conflicts of interest
No journalist should take a bribe or inducement to write a story a certain way or to

prevent publication of a story. This would include commercial pressure from adver-
tisers or proprietors to distort or spike a story, and possibly any other gift or freebie.
The NUJ Code of Conduct says: ‘A journalist shall not accept bribes nor shall he/she
allow other inducements to influence the performance of his/her professional
duties.’ The British PCC’s Code has nothing to say on the subject but does talk
about the inadvisability of journalists who work in the financial sphere cashing in
on their own advice by taking early advantage of confidential information. The most
significant case in this area concerned the Mirror when its editor Piers Morgan and
the City Slickers columnists Anil Bhoyrul and James Hipwell were accused of mul-
tiple breaches of the PCC Code over a sustained period of time. The City Slickers
advised readers to buy shares in Viglen computers in January 2000. Mirror editor
Piers Morgan told the PCC he had bought £20,000 worth, but later, after adverse
publicity about the shares, sold them and donated the profit to charity. During
Bhoyrul and Hipwell’s trial in February 2006, however, it was alleged he had
bought £67,000 worth of shares. Bhoyrul pleaded guilty to manipulating the stock
market and was sentenced to 180 hours of community service, Hipwell was found
guilty at trial and sentenced to six months in prison, three of them suspended.
It is important that journalists should be seen as providing truthful information.
To alter the balance of a story for financial gain would be to make void that essen-
tial pact with the reader. Whether untruthfulness is caused by laziness or
incompetence, or by a more reprehensible desire for financial reward, doesn’t really
matter that much. The effect is that the reader can no longer trust the report and the
publication’s purpose is no longer served. So although the PCC does not have
clauses on bribery, its clause on accuracy is sufficient to deal with the problem,
should it arise, because the offending material should not be published.
The pressures from advertisers tend to be not so much on what is written, but
whether it is written at all. The Royal Commission on the Press (1949) said: ‘We
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have had evidence . . . that the direct influence of advertisers on the policy of news-
papers is negligible.’ While there may be even today little evidence of direct influence
on policy there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of indirect influence on the type of
stories used and the way they are handled.
It is worth reminding ourselves that taking a bribe in order to use or suppress a
story would be immoral unless of course the reporter is totally honest with the
reader about it, in which case it is arguable that it is a bribe. What may not be so
clear to those outside the industry is the range of ‘bribes’ on offer to journalists and
the difficulty many have with dealing with them.
Being slipped a £50 note in order to suppress a story is extremely rare these days,
although a hundred years ago it was standard practice for some of the more
unsavoury press. It was in answer to a request for a ‘suppression’ fee that the Duke
of Wellington made his famous statement ‘Publish and be damned.’ But being
offered ‘freebies’, from a bottle of scotch at Christmas to sunshine holidays, or free
dinners, theatre tickets, books, records, CDs or loans of cars is common. Many new
products are launched at lavish receptions with free food and drink to put the jour-
nalists in a receptive frame of mind.
Dealing with these freebies is difficult. Many media outlets would not review
books, CDs, restaurants or holidays at all if the product was not provided free –
they would not (so it is claimed) be able to afford it. Even if they could or did, the
journalists themselves would not be paying so it would still be a benefit.
The freebie is a vexed question that has bothered some journalists for years. Some
see no problem in accepting hospitality, claiming that it does not alter what they
would have written without it. Others argue that journalists should be squeaky
clean and that all freebies are tainted. Some American and Scandinavian papers
refuse to have anything to do with freebies.
Of course, the difficulty is deciding whether a freebie alters a journalist’s view of
the product. Some financial institutions are legendary for the lavish scale of their
trips, which their PR departments claim are to allow journalists and company per-
sonnel to get to know each other. One cannot help thinking that this could be done
just as easily over a glass of wine at home.
The real danger of freebies is that the journalist is unable to bring the full range
of sceptical faculties to bear, which is why companies are so generous. As a young
editor on a cash-strapped weekly, the records that companies happily sent me each
month meant I was able to run record reviews. I enjoyed listening to the music and
writing the reviews, but would I have been more critical if the records had been paid
for out of my own personal resources? And what about the record company? As far
as the records went, I was never aware of pressure to write positive reviews.
Presumably, they took the view that merely advertising the existence of a new
record was enough to entice fans to buy it; my opinion probably did not count for
much.
But there have been more serious suggestions of companies trying to bring
pressure to bear for good write-ups. Football clubs have banned reporters from the
press stand, forcing them either to buy a ticket or not attend, because of a report the
football club disliked. The same has been known to happen at press premières of
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films. There are those who say that the only way to do reviews of things like cars is
to accept loans of cars. Because all the cars tested are on loan, they are all measured
to the same standard and the fact that no payment is made does not become an
issue. An interview with former BBC 2 Top Gear front-man, Jeremy Clarkson,
reported in Private Eye, gave an insight into the perks and problems of free loans:
Clarkson tells the Eye that he has not one Jaguar but four on indefinite loan. ‘I’ve got lots of cars
on free loans,’ he cheerfully admitted to the Eye. ‘If they’re really good I just don’t give them back.
Everybody does it. We’ve all got Jags.’ But he insists this would never influence his judgement. ‘I’m
quite straight. You don’t last very long in this business if you start taking corporate backhanders.’
(Private Eye 19 March 1999: 7)
The NUJ Code of Conduct states: ‘A journalist shall not accept bribes; nor shall
he/she allow other inducements to influence the performance of his/her professional
duties.’ The BBC’s Editorial Guidelines takes a similarly robust view:
The BBC has a duty to be honest with its audiences. They must be sure that the products or
services featured in BBC programmes have been selected for editorial and not promotional reasons.
This requires great care from programme makers as commercial interests do seek to influence the
editorial process. The BBC has an obligation to resist such pressures and to be able to demonstrate
how it does so. (BBC Producers’ Guidelines 1996)
The guidelines lay down firm rules:

• No BBC programme must ever accept reduced cost or free products or services
in return for an on-air credit or any visual or verbal reference to the provider.
• Any reference in programmes to products or services must be for sound
editorial reasons only.
However, even the BBC accepts that in order to use the licence-payers’ money
wisely, there may be occasions when products or services can be used free or at
reduced prices. Consumer programmes reviewing products may accept freebies,
provided it is made clear that this does not allow a right of preview or guarantee a
favourable mention. The BBC makes it clear that staff should not accept personal
benefits under any circumstances. The PCC makes no mention of bribes in its Code,
but this is because it is a code aimed at publishers, not news-gatherers.
A freebie is not the only way that journalists can be influenced. Threats, either
direct (‘you write up that report about my brother and I’ll come round and sort you
out!’) or indirect, can have a similar effect. Pressure from advertisers, real or poten-
tial, is one of the major sources of undue influence. Often editors worry that writing
up a story which is likely to show an advertiser in a bad light will cause the adver-
tiser to withdraw the advertising, so consequently the story is dropped. The Royal
Commission on the Press (1947–49) spent some time examining this area. It came
to the conclusion that attempts to influence by individual advertisers were infre-
quent and unsuccessful. The Commission had no evidence of concerted pressure by
advertisers for a particular policy but noted that: ‘So long as newspapers do not pay
without advertising revenue, a newspaper may well think twice before it adopts any
policy which is likely to reduce advertisers’ demand for its space’ (Royal
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Commission 1949: 143). Finding proof in this area is almost impossible, but going
purely on intuition and anecdotal evidence, it seems to me that things have wors-
ened since the 1949 Royal Commission and that editors and proprietors are now
much more likely to allow pressure from advertisers, either real or anticipated, to
influence editorial decisions. I can certainly recall a case that happened to me.
Writing an advertising feature about a chain of shops, I was rung by one of their
managers asking to read the copy. I refused and was told that if I didn’t read it to
them, they would pull their advertisements in the paper. I refused again and
reported the incident to my editor who, to his credit, supported my stand. The
advertisements were not used, but I am always glad it was the editor who had to
face a fuming advertising department and not me.
Sometimes, of course, reverse influence is the case. A paper may want to show an
advertiser (or a linked business) in a good light. The Sun, for instance, so regularly
puffs BSkyB, its sister satellite TV station, that Private Eye has started a special
column to mock better (or should that be worse?) examples.
Conflicts of interest
Just how impartial should journalists be in their personal lives? This is a subject that
is not often talked about amongst journalists. It tends to be accepted automatically,
for instance, that although a journalist may belong to a political party, he or she will
write fairly about a range of political issues.
The only sensible response that can be made to this dilemma is for reporters to
ensure that they avoid working on any story which would bring a conflict of
interest. Someone who feels strongly about animal rights, for instance, would ask
not to go on a story about intensive farming, unless the angle the paper wanted
specifically included a view of intensive farming from an animal rights sympathiser
or, of course, if the reporter worked for an animal rights magazine.
While this is a fairly clear and easy moral decision to take, it is often more difficult
when other community interests are involved. Any journalist working on a paper or
broadcast station with a clearly defined community is going to find some difficulty as
he or she becomes involved with that community. Every local journalist knows the
problems of being asked to do PR for his or her children’s school fête or for the charity
committee to which they belong. Gradually, as one becomes part of a community in this
way, pressures, usually very subtle, build up to push certain stories or suppress others.
The moral stance in these types of conflict is for the journalist to be honest with
the editor and to explain his or her stance. The editor can then decide whether to
use the story, spike it, or put someone else on it. Often, of course, there is little
problem. If a parent writes the story about a planned school fête, then it is no more
likely to be biased than if an impartial reporter were to write it, and it might be
more accurate. After all, plenty of PR material is used in the papers these days with
only a light edit. If there were suggestions that the fête committee were on the fiddle,
however, things would be very different.
Other conflicts of interest, apart from advertising and the misuse of information,
can arise, particularly for broadcasting journalists where the need to be impartial is
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so important. Promotional activities, advertising and political activity can all be

hurdles for the journalist, especially those in broadcasting. The NUJ Code of
Conduct prevents journalists from endorsing material in advertising unless they are
advertising the publication for which they work. The BBC also has much to say
about advertising and promotional activity. It tells its staff that all such work is
unacceptable when it might compromise public trust in the integrity of programmes.
It might be possible for a journalist to support a worthy cause, but to support a
commercial organisation would be putting impartiality at risk. The same applies to
political parties. The BBC is also concerned about its staff training people on how
best to use the media to promote themselves or their organisations, and this is also
proscribed, presumably for fear of seeming to offer an unfair advantage.
Presumption of innocence
Whether we start with the UN Declaration of Human Rights or in a more lowly
fashion with simple fair dealing, few would argue against everyone having the right
to be presumed innocent of any crime unless proven guilty by a court of law, duly
constituted for the purpose of hearing their alleged crime and deciding upon the
justice of the case against them. In practice this is often more difficult to achieve.
Often, people appear guilty of things for which there is little hard evidence. It is
tempting for a journalist to write a story which will present someone as guilty of a
crime or misdemeanour. Take an example: A row breaks out at a supermarket
check-out. A man becomes violent and hits another man. There is a struggle. The
man who started the fight leaves the supermarket and drives off in his car. A
reporter could well use this story, using the evidence from the other person involved
in the tussle. This witness would of course claim that he was the injured party. He
did nothing to provoke the other. An unwary reporter might be tempted to use the
car’s registration plate in an effort to help bring the man to justice. This would label
the owner of that car as someone who involved himself in violent behaviour. This
may not be the case. Perhaps the car had been stolen or borrowed. Perhaps the
witness was lying to cover up his own actions.
Many countries have strict laws governing what may be written about crimes and
the reporting of them both during court cases and before. Britain, for instance, has
a number of laws which determine exactly what can or cannot be written about.
Breach of these laws is considered a very serious offence. ‘Contempt proceedings are
vigorously prosecuted, usually by the Attorney General, with the offender facing
criminal sanctions if found guilty’ (Crone 2002: 140).
But presumption of innocence is more than concern about contempt of court,
important to the good practice of justice though this may be. It is a matter of
ensuring that no one should be falsely accused. Approaches to this vary widely
throughout the world. In Britain, the law is very strict, yet every detail of a criminal
proceeding from the act itself to the eventual sentencing of the criminal can be and
often is covered in detail. British journalists believe that justice should be seen to be
done. The tight restrictions of the law can ensure a fair trial but leave loopholes. In
a celebrated British case, Frederick West had been arrested on charges of ten
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murders. He was accused of abducting young girls, abusing them and then killing
them and burying their bodies beneath his home. After being taken into custody, but
before he could be brought to trial, he hanged himself. Many British papers were
full of stories the next day describing him as a ‘murderer’. Yet he had not been tried;
no evidence had ever been presented to a court.
Britain’s strong laws about what can and cannot be covered have allowed them-
selves to be distorted away from the aim of presumption of innocence into being
solely a protection of the court itself and a bar on bringing it into contempt. British
journalists do not see presumption of innocence as an area of ethical concern. They
are worried solely about committing a contempt of court and the damage to their
paper or broadcast station that this would bring. Presumption of innocence does not
appear in the PCC or the BCC’s Codes of Conduct. Consequently, when the law no
longer applies (as was the case following the death of Frederick West), British jour-
nalists are not constrained by anything.
In Sweden, however, the opposite is the case. There are few laws restricting what
can be written about court cases, yet the code of conduct is strong. Clause 14 says:
‘Remember that, in the eyes of the law, a person suspected of an offence is always
presumed innocent until he is proved guilty. The final outcome of a case that is
described should be reported.’ Clause 15 also adds: ‘Give careful thought to the
harmful consequences that might follow for persons if their names are published.
Refrain from publishing names unless it is in the public interest.’
Swedish journalists take this very seriously and so it is unlikely that they would
name people mentioned in a story that would lead to them being presumed guilty.
British journalism comes from a very different tradition and not publishing a name
would be considered the same as failing to find a good source for a story.
Chequebook journalism
Many sections of the media make payments to informants and sources. The NUJ
Code has nothing to say about this practice, but the PCC has a fairly lengthy clause
covering this area:
(i) Payment or offers of payment for stories or information must not be made directly or
through agents to witnesses or potential witnesses in current criminal proceedings except
where the material concerned ought to be published in the public interest and there is an
overriding need to make or promise to make a payment for this to be done. Journalists must
take every possible step to ensure that no financial dealings have influence on the evidence
that those witnesses may give. (An editor authorising such a payment must be prepared to
demonstrate that there is a legitimate public interest at stake, involving matters that the
public has a right to know. The payment or, where accepted, the offer of payment to any
witness who is actually cited to give evidence must be disclosed to the prosecution and the
defence and the witness should be advised of this.)
(ii) Payment or offers of payment for stories, pictures or information, must not be made directly
or through agents to convicted or confessed criminals or to their associates – who may
include family, friends and colleagues – except where the material concerned ought to be
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published in the public interest and payment is necessary for this to be done. (PCC Code of
Conduct 1998)
The BBC also advises against paying witnesses and criminals: ‘Programmes
should not make payments to criminals, nor generally to former criminals who are
simply talking about their crimes’ (BBC Producers’ Guidelines, 1996). Nor does the
BBC generally allow witnesses to be paid before a trial. There are one or two excep-
tions: overwhelming public interest or because the interviewee is an expert witness
whose professional opinion is being sought.
Various governments have been concerned about payments made to witnesses for
their stories since the Rosemary West trial. The PCC finally agreed to introduce a
clause into its Code of Practice on this in order to prevent a new law being intro-
duced.
Requests for unused material

This is not the same as not revealing sources and the issues are mainly those of pro-
tecting journalists in difficult positions. If it becomes widely known that journalists
supply untransmitted video or still pictures to the police, their position on news-
worthy events such as demonstrations and riots could be put at risk. Some violent
elements may well seek to ensure that video and still pictures do not find their way
to the police by attacking the photographers and film crews at such events.
Material that is transmitted or published is, of course, already in the public
domain and there is therefore little increased risk in cooperating with the auth-
orities. Unpublished material is a different matter. The NUJ has supported
photographers facing court orders for their unpublished material by sending the
material abroad to safe places provided by the International Federation of
Journalists.
The BBC is also concerned and says in its Guidelines: ‘The BBC will not volun-
tarily allow access to untransmitted material when to do so would endanger people
who work for the BBC or when it would make it more difficult to gather such
material in the future’ (BBC Producers’ Guidelines, 1996). The BBC is also con-
cerned that allowing access to untransmitted material could point to the identity of
a confidential source and says that all such requests should be refused. It does
occasionally allow viewing, but insists on a court order for such material to be
removed.
Protection of personal honour

Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; . . .
But he who filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed. (Shakespeare, Othello, III, iii, 155–61)
There are very few if any countries in the world with a free, uncensored media that
does not have laws preventing the defamation of citizens. Italy includes it in its
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constitution while America, Britain and most of Europe, Asia and Africa have laws of
libel: laws, either civil or criminal, often both, which prevent the publication of infor-
mation about a person likely to damage his or her reputation amongst ‘right-thinking’
members of the society. The UN Declaration of Human Rights includes a clause giving
the individual the right to protect his or her personal honour.
We put a lot of store by our status within the society in which we live. Not only
does it directly affect our ability to feed, clothe and house ourselves and our fam-
ilies, but it goes to the very core of our being – we are our social status, if you like.
Many people have committed suicide rather than face the disgrace that damaging
personal revelations would bring.
There is a certain crossover with privacy here. How much can we invade a
person’s privacy in order to see if his or her personal honour is worthy of his or her
reputation? Most laws of libel allow the publication of material about a person,
providing it is truthful and it has not been published with malice – two important
tests that no journalist should miss. Since the penalties for a lost libel action can be
high, few journalists will risk a libel action if they believe the subject has the where-
withal to bring such a lawsuit. The effects of impugning someone’s reputation
should never be underestimated and journalists should take all possible steps to
ensure they do not do so in error or needlessly. Publishing reputation-damaging
information without checking it is about the worst offence a journalist can commit.
However, once those tests are made and the journalist is sure the information is
true, the right to publish under the law exists.
So concerned have British juries become in recent years about the kinds of stories
being written about individuals that they have paid out fantastic sums in damages.
Private Eye was involved in one such case when a jury awarded Sonia Sutcliffe
£600,000 leaving Private Eye’s astonished editor, Ian Hislop, to tell the television
cameras that if that was justice, ‘I’m a banana.’ In another case, The Sun paid
massive damages to rock star Elton John. They later published a front-page apology
under the heading ‘Sorry Elton’, but it is still doubtful whether the damage done to
the star by these revelations was undone by the payout and the apology. We spend
a lifetime building up a reputation but it can be destroyed in just a few careless
moments.
Data protection
Access to information about subjects of stories may be limited by the Data
Protection Act. This prevents data collectors from passing on ‘sensitive personal
data’, that is, any data that can give personal information about a person, including
their health, mental state, sexuality, trade union membership or criminal record.
This could mean, for instance, that it would be difficult to find out information
about someone hurt in a road accident. Before the Data Protection Act, it was a
simple job to ring the hospital and ask for a condition report. Now the information
requires the approval of the subject or a person in authority, a police superin-
tendent, for instance.
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Chapter 8
R E P O RTI N G TH E VU LN E RAB LE
This chapter discusses ethical issues to do with those who are

particularly vulnerable to media abuse. These include:
• Children
• The mentally ill
• Victims of disasters
One of the problems for journalists is that while we would aim for societies that
treat all people equally, we have to accept that most societies will always have
‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, those with power and influence and those with none and
that journalists may need to treat those who are more vulnerable differently to those
who have power and influence.
Groups without power who may need to be treated differently include children,
ethnic minorities and social minorities such as gay people and disabled people and
those subject to abuse and violence.
Words, pictures, expressions, including the choice of copy or video footage and
its editing and use, can be crucial in deciding whether copy or video will give a
truthful or misleading impression about the views, feelings or approach of a min-
ority or oppressed group. Many a politician has seized on the scapegoat nature of a
minority group to place all the problems and dissatisfaction of society at its door.
From the very earliest of leaders through to the modern politician of your choice,
there have always been those who have been willing to play on people’s fears about
other cultures.
Nor is it just politicians. Ordinary citizens are also often keen to blame minority
or culturally oppressed groups for their problems and failures. Often this can be
explained by ignorance or fear. If we do not know or understand the culture of a min-
ority or oppressed group, it is easy to see its behaviour as unacceptable or ‘uncivilised’
and therefore not worthy of consideration or respect. Only when we come to under-
stand another culture’s ways can we start to realise that it is, like ours, only human
and neither totally wrong nor totally right. It should be a part of a journalist’s role to
give readers the information they need to come to these decisions, not to play on their
fears and prejudices. If journalists tell people only what they expect to hear about
minority or oppressed groups, then the debate about their position in society is not
advanced. It is part of the journalist’s duty to help advance society’s awareness of
such problems by providing people with a wider truth than their existing prejudices.
This determination to inform people and help them overcome their fears does not
mean that a journalist cannot write material that is critical of one culture or
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132 8 • Reporting the vulnerable
another. Journalists need to be truthful about a society, cultural group or minority

if we are to come to valid conclusions. The public needs to know why this group of
people has aroused hatred in another, and the failings and good points of both, if
they are to understand difficult and serious situations around the world. We can use
Aristotle’s golden mean here to try to set the standard somewhere between the fru-
gality of no debate and the excess of printing every offensive piece of bigotry
available. The elements of hatred and violence are often used to help define this
mean into a universal law. An example of a debate where a lack of sound infor-
mation stunts understanding is Northern Ireland.
Case study 8.1 Northern Ireland

The Republicans and the Unionists had been unable to accept each other’s view for
some time. This erupted into violence in 1967. This ‘civil war’, politely referred to as
‘The Troubles’, continued until 1994 when a ceasefire was called by the IRA, the armed
wing of the Republican movement. That ceasefire has now wobbled into the Good
Friday agreement, although at the time of writing, peace and stable government still
seem a long way off. For a little more than twenty-five years, Northern Ireland, and to
a lesser extent the mainland of the British Isles, suffered serious violence from terrorist
acts killing thousands and maiming many thousands more. Yet in Britain coverage of
the dispute meant that the tabloid popular press was more concerned with condemning
terrorism than investigating its causes.
Reports written in sensationalist and pejorative language after each fatal bomb
attack meant good sales but also an inevitable hardening of attitudes amongst readers.
There were few attempts to investigate in detail the reasons for the violence and what
the IRA and other paramilitaries, both Republican and Unionist, hoped to achieve by
it. While the condemnation of needless killing, violence and misery may be an accept-
able reason to drop objectivity, the position of those caught in the middle of the conflict
was not advanced by the fixed, unthinking stance taken up by the tabloid press. If more
time had been spent investigating why a group of UK citizens felt so strongly about an
issue that they were prepared to kill and destroy in support of it, it is possible that we
might be a little closer to a solution.
The tabloids’ approach was compounded by the British government’s decision to
make it an offence to interview or show IRA members or members of other banned
paramilitary groups on television. This simple abuse of free access to the thoughts and
opinions of many at the centre of ‘The Troubles’, made by the British Home Secretary
Douglas Hurd in 1988, was carried to extremes in some areas. Introduced to prevent
‘terrorists’ enjoying ‘the oxygen of publicity’, it did nothing to prevent the killing and
bombing but a lot to ensure that the dearth of good information about ‘The Troubles’,
that had already been started by the tabloids, was not relieved by usually more
thoughtful broadcasters.
The BBC is rightly concerned about reporting on terrorism. Its Editorial

Guidelines warn against picking up terrorist language and using it to legitimise
activities. Words such as ‘execute’, ‘court martial’ and ‘liberate’ should all be attrib-
uted or not used at all.
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Reporting the vulnerable 133
Many codes of conduct have clauses against discrimination. As would be

expected from the BBC, its Editorial Guidelines have excellent advice on the use of
discriminatory language. This discusses terminology and methods of reporting on
issues involving women, Asian, African and Caribbean people and people with dis-
abilities. Religious groups, the aged and a range of people with differing sexual
orientation also come under close scrutiny. The BBC says: ‘We aim to reflect fully
and fairly all of the United Kingdom’s people and cultures in our services’
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/harm/portrayal.shtml
(accessed 23/7/06)). The National Union of Journalists’ Code says simply: ‘A jour-
nalist shall only mention a person’s age, race, colour, creed, illegitimacy, disability,
marital status (or lack of it), gender or sexual orientation if this information is
strictly relevant. A journalist shall neither originate nor process material which
encourages discrimination, ridicule, prejudice or hatred on any of the above-
mentioned grounds.’ It is an attempt to tap into that golden mean with a universal
law.
This approach is fairly widespread around the world, with the Swedish code rep-
resenting a sound example. It says: ‘Do not emphasise race, sex, nationality,
occupation, political affiliation or religious persuasion in the case of the persons
concerned if such particulars are not important in the context or are disparaging’
(Swedish Press Code 1995). The British PCC has something similar: ‘(i) The press
must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour,
religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.
(ii) Details of an individual’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or
mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story’
(http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html (accessed 21/7/06)). Ofcom has a similar
clause for broadcast journalists.
In some countries this area is considered serious enough for laws to be introduced
to prevent incitement to hatred. Britain has such laws. These do not apply just to
the media, but their general application impinges strongly there. Broadcasting or
printing material likely to incite hatred on the basis of race, colour or creed is an
offence. Denmark has very strong laws in this area which has led to several clashes
between the authorities and broadcasters, and journalists seeking to produce reports
of neo-fascist excesses in that country.
Despite all these laws and codes, discrimination is still a strong strand running
through much of the media. Homophobia is still widely apparent in the tabloid
press and racism can also be found regularly, albeit in a slightly more muted form.
This is not the place for what would be a lengthy discussion on the representation
of women in the tabloid press, but there are many who find much tabloid coverage
to be sexist from the ‘Starbird’ through to the Sun’s picture file on the agony page.
The PCC has come under heavy criticism over the years as it has rarely adjudi-
cated complaints about discrimination. The tabloid press’s coverage of asylum
seekers has seen a substantial rise in the number of complaints about discriminatory
coverage but no complaints have been upheld on the grounds of discrimination. The
PCC has done more to take complaints from third parties about accuracy and has
also issued strong guidance on wording for asylum seekers.
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The Commission is concerned that editors should ensure that their journalists covering these issues
are mindful of the problems that can occur and take care to avoid misleading or distorted
terminology. By way of example, as an ‘asylum seeker’ is someone currently seeking refugee status
or humanitarian protection, there can be no such thing in law as an ‘illegal asylum seeker’. A
‘refugee’ is someone who has fled their country in fear of their life, and may have been granted
asylum under the 1951 Refugee Convention or someone who otherwise qualifies for Humanitarian
Protection, Discretionary Leave or has been granted Exceptional Leave to Remain in the country.
An asylum seeker can only become an ‘illegal immigrant’ if he or she remains in the UK after
having failed to respond to a removal notice. Those groups set up to support and advocate on
behalf of refugees and asylum seekers can provide further clarification to journalists if required.
(http://www.pcc.org.uk/news/index.html?article=OTE= (accessed 21/7/06))
Protection of minors
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child was introduced in 1989
and sets out children’s rights in 54 articles. The Convention is a universally agreed
set of standards and obligations that should be respected by governments. This is a
legally binding convention, but is of more interest to us for the framework it sets
down and the standards it provides for our approach to children that involve
ensuring special care and protection for both the child and its family and the recog-
nition that the child should be fully prepared to live an independent live.
Four articles in particular protect children’s right of access to the media and
protect children from the media either when we deal with children through the
courts or directly:
Article 3
1. In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare
institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the
child shall be a primary consideration.
Article 12
1. States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right
to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due
weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.
Article 13
1. The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in
writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.
Article 16
1. No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family,
home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.
http://www.unicef.org/crc/
Under the Convention, it is the duty of the state to ensure that these rights are
upheld and this helps explain why so many countries have strong laws to protect
minors, although many had such laws before the 1989 Convention. In the UK many
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of these rights are enshrined in the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and the
Children Act 1989.
There are two main elements about dealing with minors that need concern us.
1. Not taking advantage of those who may be too young to make legitimate
judgements.
2. Protecting the reputation of someone who may be too young to know better.
The PCC Code of Conduct in Britain is fairly strict on the subject of children and
how the media may deal with them:
(i) Young people should be free to complete their time at school without unnecessary intrusion.
(ii) A child under 16 must not be interviewed or photographed on issues involving their own or
another child’s welfare unless a custodial parent or similarly responsible adult consents.
(iii) Pupils must not be approached or photographed at school without the permission of the
school authorities.
(iv) Minors must not be paid for material involving children’s welfare, nor parents or guardians
for material about their children or wards, unless it is clearly in the child’s interest.
(v) Editors must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or guardian as sole
justification for publishing details of a child’s private life.
(http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html accessed 21/7/06)
Despite this strong clause, the PCC does not prevent the naming of children in
situations where it is their own fame or notoriety that is the issue.
The clause quoted above is built on the back of British law that largely prevents the
naming of children involved in crime. There can be exceptions, at the discretion of the
judge, but these are rare. The two young killers of Jamie Bulger, a young boy who was
led off to be killed in humiliating circumstances, were 10 and 11 years old and the
judge took the unusual step of naming them only after a guilty verdict had been deliv-
ered and, in part at least, to protect some other children whom rumour had named as
possible suspects. The Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 section 45 has increased the power
of judges to name young offenders if it is seen to be in the interests of justice to do so.
The naming of juveniles is another area where the law has skewed ethical values.
Whilst most reporters accept that not naming juvenile offenders is right, they name
youngsters involved in other situations without a thought. Naming the children of
the famous has also become increasingly unacceptable. The death of the Princess of
Wales brought dealings with minors into sharp relief and the PCC has had a number
of complaints from famous parents whose children’s privacy has been invaded.
The BBC and Ofcom have even more complex rules on the use of children’s iden-
tities, which become more confused when these involve criminal offences or
Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs). There are two main elements that a jour-
nalist needs to consider when dealing with minors:
1. Whether or not to name a minor in a story.
2. Whether or not to interview a minor in pursuit of a story.
The aim in point 1 is to ensure that a minor who makes a mistake by breaking
the law or committing some other act that is both newsworthy and antisocial does
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not have his or her adult life blighted by this childhood slip. This upholds the gen-
erally accepted principle that childhood is a time to learn and a time to make
mistakes and that only when a certain level of maturity is reached should people be
held fully accountable for their actions. It also hints at the potential unfairness of
naming or identifying a particular child when in fact the story is more general. If the
story concerns the antisocial behaviour of certain groups of children, it might well
be unfair to identify one or two children as examples. Journalists should also be
careful in interviewing minors so that they do not put words into the child’s mouth.
Very often children make good witnesses and can provide accurate information.
They are often very observant, have better memories than their elders and have the
time and inclination to put these to good use. But they can also be easily led in their
desire to give a person whatever it is the child thinks he or she wants. This is par-
ticularly true in what may be to them an exciting and glamorous opportunity to be
interviewed by a journalist, particularly if that interview is being televised.
To ask young people to describe something they have seen is unlikely to lead to
problems but to ask children to explain their actions without an adult they trust to
help and guide them is unfair. As always, discretion is required when dealing with
any story involving minors. Asking schoolchildren on the way into school what they
think about having to wear school uniform might be fine, provided the head teacher
is aware of the identity of the suspicious character skulking outside the school gates
soliciting the pupils. Asking them about drug dealers or bullying could put them at
risks of which they are often innocently unaware.
Children require special consideration when it comes to stories about them or
involving them. It is a generally held belief that children should have the right to
make mistakes as they grow up. All of us learn, and many of us become better
people, by making mistakes. Often one can only know what is right by learning
from experience what is wrong. Children always end up touching the hot stove
despite regular warnings from parents. How can they really understand the concepts
of ‘heat’ and ‘burn’ until they have done so? With any luck they will experiment
cautiously. But as every parent knows, this is not always the case. So what if they
accidentally burn the house down? Is it really necessary to name such an impulsive
child? Certainly the story that a child playing with matches has burned down a
house is in the public interest, warning all parents of the dangers of leaving children
with matches. But should journalists expose the child to the derision of school
friends or worse?
Although no one is yet calling for new legislation to extend the prevention of
naming minors beyond the courts, there are plenty who believe the media go too far.
In a powerful plea for his son to be left alone, the father of a child born to a surro-
gate mother says:
Our mistake [in allowing a story to be written about their child’s birth] has resulted in Peter
receiving playground taunts about his family history. . . . puberty is traumatic enough without the
National Daily making it worse. . . . I am not suggesting that they [journalists and editors] should
censor themselves; but they must remember that innocent young children cannot answer back. They
have no power and must rely upon us adults to defend their interests. Where no crime has been
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committed, where no great injustice is being covered up, where it is merely the interests of the
newspaper that are being served – they must think more than twice about whether to publish
information that could cause damage to a child. (George X, 1997: 15–16)
George X does not call for legislation to prevent naming, nor does he object to
references to his son, provided he is not named.
The law goes to some effort to protect children involved with the courts. The
Children and Young Persons Act 1933 section 49 and the Criminal Justice Act 1991
prevent the identification of alleged offenders or witnesses at youth courts if they are
under the age of 18. The Children and Young Persons Act 1933 also allows judges
to make a section 39 order to protect the identity of children appearing before adult
courts ‘whether the minor is the subject of those proceedings or is a witness to them’
(Carey, 1996: 94). In family matters, the Children Act 1989 puts such cases to the
magistrates’ courts and specially trained magistrates. The Act states:
No person shall publish any material which is intended or likely to identify:
• any child as being involved in such proceedings, or
• an address or school as being that of a child involved in such proceedings. (Crone 2002: 127)
The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 tightened this even further by
making it an offence to report any matter that might lead to the identification of an
alleged offender, witness or victim under the age of 18, once an investigation into a
criminal offence has started. Once the case comes to court, then it may become poss-
ible to name someone under 18 if the court thinks it is in the interests of justice so
to do.
The main exception to all this are the Anti-social Behaviour Acts. ASBOs were
introduced in 1998 to deal with those causing ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ in a
local government area. They can apply to anyone over the age of 10 (16 in
Scotland). The ASBO powers were beefed up by the government in 2003 to include
drug-dealing and children with air guns. When an ASBO is made in respect of a
child, it should normally be accompanied by a parenting order – an order for the
parent to attend regular counselling sessions and to comply with requirements made
in the order.
Much of the confusion about the naming of children subject to ASBOs surrounds
the type of court involved. Youth courts impose an automatic ban on identifying
children. In an adult court, a section 39 order has to be imposed, banning the media
from identifying children. So, when an ASBO is issued against a child or young
person, a section 39 order can also be imposed by magistrates. It is in these circum-
stances that reporters often challenge the section 39 order so that they can identity
the defendant. The government has made it clear that it intends for the media to
name those served with Anti-social Behaviour orders:
Automatic reporting restrictions would apply (under Section 39 of the Children and Young Persons
Act 1933) to orders made on conviction in the youth court, but there are no automatic reporting
restrictions in the magistrates’ courts against juveniles. A court making an ASBO does have the
power to impose restrictions to protect the identity of a person under 18. But the imposition of
reporting restrictions may restrict the effectiveness of the order if the effectiveness of the ASBO will
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largely depend on the wider community knowing the details.

(http://www.crimereduction.gov.uk/asbos9.pdf (accessed 21/7/06))
As well as general concerns about working with children, the PCC also tries to
ensure that the victims of sexual offences are not identified. This clause was agreed
in consultation with other regulators to ensure that jigsaw identification across dif-
ferent media was not possible. The PCC Code of Practice instructs journalists that:
1. The press must not, even if legally free to do so, identify children under 16 who are victims or
witnesses in cases involving sex offences.
2. In any press report of a case involving a sexual offence against a child –
(i) The child must not be identified.
(ii) The adult may be identified.
(iii) The word ‘incest’ must not be used where a child victim might be identified.
(iv) Care must be taken that nothing in the report implies the relationship between the
accused and the child. (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html (accessed 21/7/06))
Jigsaw identification is where one publication may name the accused adult, but
not mention the relationship to the victim, while in another publication or radio
bulletin the relationship is mentioned but the accused is not named, making it poss-
ible to identify the child victim of an incestuous sexual assault. The PCC has evolved
a system for dealing with this and it takes it very seriously. The former Chairman
of the Code of Practice Committee, the late Sir David English, then Chairman and
Editor-in-Chief of Associated Newspapers, wrote to providers of training in jour-
nalism in February 1996, expressing concern that a number of trainees taking the
April 1995 National Certificate Examination in Journalism seemed unaware of the
clause on jigsaw identification:
This is a matter of grave concern and I would ask you to make absolutely clear to those in your
charge –
• The code of practice is a foundation stone of successful self-regulation in newspaper and
magazine publishing.
• There is nothing optional in the code – it sets out standards of conduct and practice which all
publications and their journalists must follow.
• The provisions in the code relating to cases involving a sexual offence against a child are being
applied by radio and television as well as the press. Only if we all follow the provisions
meticulously, can the risk of jigsaw identification be avoided.
The jigsaw clause was a development of the old Press Council’s guidelines on
jigsaw identification of rape victims. This followed the Ealing Vicarage rape in 1985
in which the daughter of a vicar was savagely raped by three men who were later
imprisoned. A series of reports in different newspapers led to the woman being
clearly identified, even though no paper actually named her. The Press Council
called a meeting with representatives from the Newspaper Publishers’ Association
(NPA), the Newspaper Society (NS), the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society, the
Guild of British Newspaper Editors (now just the Guild of British Editors), the
Association of British Editors, the BBC, ITN, IRN and individual editors of national
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newspapers, the Metropolitan Police, the Association of Chief Police Officers and
the Association of Chief Police Officers (Scotland) to discuss the issue. The confer-
ence came up with guidelines that specified the following:
• At the time of the offence no more details leading to identification of the victim
should be published than would be permissible during the trial.
• The name and address of the victim or her relatives should not be published.
• The relationship between the victim and any other person named in the story
should not be published.
• Premises where the crime took place should not be identified.
• The police could ask for such information to be published for operational
reasons. (Press Council, 1989: 241)
Since these guidelines were drawn up in 1989, the law has changed again and the
Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 now makes it an offence to publish the
name, address or picture of an alleged victim of any sexual offence, not just rape,
from the minute a complaint is made. Once an arrest has been made, the Act
strengthens this to include a clause which prevents the media publishing any matter
‘likely to lead members of the public to identify a person as the person against
whom the offence is alleged to have been committed’.
Children and celebrity

Children whose parents are famous have come under more pressure lately and their
parents have become more protective. Prince Charles decided that he had no choice but
to complain after a story about Prince Harry appeared in the Mirror in November 1998.
The Prince’s anger about the invasion of his son’s privacy over a trivial rugby injury was
exacerbated by the Mirror’s claims that the Palace was trying to censor the press.
The Prince of Wales has reported the Mirror to the Press Complaints Commission in an effort to
protect Prince Harry’s privacy at school.
The spokesman said: ‘The Prince of Wales has asked me to say that he is deeply disappointed by
the reaction of the editor of the Mirror [Piers Morgan] to the simple and straightforward appeal for
Prince Harry to be allowed privacy at school. We respect what Mr Morgan says about press freedom.
Indeed, we support it. However, this matter is nothing at all to do with press freedom. Instead, it is
everything to do with the privacy to which Harry and William are entitled during their education.
‘We are therefore making a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission which, with
newspaper editors, has done a great deal over the years to protect the privacy of Prince William
and Prince Harry, and will ask them to deal with it.’ (Daily Telegraph, 21 November 1998)
Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, also complained to the PCC shortly afterwards
about stories concerning his daughter’s choice of school.
Downing Street said Mr Blair and his wife Cherie would complain that the stories were ‘unfair’.
A statement [from Downing Street] said: ‘The PCC makes clear that children should be able to
complete their schooling free from press intrusion and that the private lives of children should not
be covered simply because of the fame or status of their parents.’
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The statement said that Mr and Mrs Blair ‘tolerate a great deal of media attack and intrusion
without complaint, but they see no reason why their children should not be allowed the freedom
from intrusion the PCC claims its members support’. (Daily Telegraph, 25 January 1999)
The Prince of Wales finally did a deal with the PCC in which new guidelines were
issued to editors. St James’s Palace agreed, in return, to be more open with the
media.
Some children are, of course, celebrities in their own right. This applies to the
royal princes, and Prince William is beginning to find that his good looks are
making him a target for a media keen to carve out a wider share of the teenage girl
market. Whilst coverage of him at school was reasonably muted, coverage of some
of his recent tours with his father was extensive. Celebrity of this sort is usually less
of a concern than most other coverage of minors. In the main it is accepted, even
welcomed. There are always exceptions of course.
Some people come to the attention of the media through no fault, or only limited
fault, of their own. They are often people whose rights are more limited for some
reason, or who find it difficult to uphold their rights, such as children and the users
of mental health services. Journalists need to be aware that, while not all the people
who fall into the groups discussed below are innocent, they are often more vulner-
able and less able to protect themselves and their interests, and therefore require
special consideration.
Witnesses
A journalist needs to be particularly sensitive when children are at the centre of a
story, either as witnesses to a court case or as the main interviewee in a general news
story. Standing in a witness box can be an ordeal for even the most self-confident
adult but for a child it can be a nightmare, which is made even worse by excessive
media attention. The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 allows those
under 17 and certain other classes of witness, including children, to give evidence
behind a screen or through a video link under some circumstances and this can
make it easier. The court also has the power to restrict reporting of proceedings
involving persons under 18, including witnesses. Outside the witness box, using
reports from children could put them at risk from threats and attempts at coercion.
Care needs to be taken about naming children and good journalists will always ask
themselves whether a report could put the child at risk.
Offenders
The automatic assumption is that an offending child will be protected by the law,
but of course this only happens when a child is in court. A child accused of improper
behaviour in other circumstances is often considered fair game by the media. For
example, in the summer of 1996 there were a number of cases where children had
been excluded from school but were allowed to return after their appeals were
upheld. However, teachers then refused to teach these children.
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In one of the early cases, a 10-year-old pupil was excluded from a Worksop
school for being unruly in class. He was readmitted only after a compromise scheme
was worked out:
Teachers’ union leaders, governors and local education chiefs devised the compromise scheme after
five hours of talks in Worksop last night to try to break the deadlock which has closed the 190-
pupil school. Under the arrangements, Matthew **** will return to one-to-one tuition under a
supply teacher but will also mix with selected pupils.
Councillor Fred Riddell, chairman of Nottinghamshire education committee, said the ‘mixed
menu’ education would give the boy the chance to show he was amenable to classroom discipline.
However, there is no chance of pupils at Manton School returning to the classroom this week.
Today is the school’s third day of closure. (Daily Telegraph, 31 October 1996)
The Daily Telegraph used his name in full in the story but I have decided it would
be appropriate only to use the forename Matthew in the quote.
Many of these cases seemed to be copycat, in the sense that having seen one
school take industrial action to prevent the return of a child, others followed suit. It
is entirely possible therefore that the children in the subsequent cases were nothing
like as unruly as the first principle-testing case. However, in each case the teachers
felt the child should not have been allowed to return because he or she was too
unruly to teach, whilst the independent panel which hears exclusion appeals felt the
school was wrong to have excluded the child.
At the heart of all these cases was the debate between the school and the local
authority about the standard of misbehaviour that was sufficient to merit exclusion.
However, in every newspaper report, particularly in the tabloids, the focus was on
the children involved. The children were named, their reputation blackened, and
they were given little opportunity to put their case. The matter was made worse by
television and in several of the exclusion stories, the children were interviewed,
albeit briefly. Not surprisingly, they wallowed in the unexpected attention and
enjoyed their few seconds of fame. Media coverage of this sort might well damage
the future of the children involved and, as the law believes a minor should not be
named in criminal proceedings so that their future is not jeopardised, journalists
should consider not naming a child as a reasonable practice to follow in all cases
where children are portrayed in an unfavourable light.
The Sun carried a two-page feature on four children expelled from school, none
aged more than 13, on 18 September 1996. It named them, alongside large pictures,
and published details of the views of teachers and governors. A one-paragraph
response from the mothers was the only defence for the children, yet in two of the
cases the children claimed their bad behaviour was triggered by an assault from a
teacher – being dragged from a classroom in one case and being picked up in
another. The first four paragraphs of the feature made it clear that The Sun had no
intention of approaching this subject in an objective way and was determined to
make it clear that the children were hooligans with no redeeming features:
When pupils used to step out of line they would get a clip round the ear or six of the best from the
headmaster. But today, teachers would risk swift disciplinary action for daring to hand out such
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punishments. If a head teacher and his governors try to expel an unruly pupil, the parents will often
rush to an independent appeals panel – appointed by the local education authority – demanding
their child is taken back. And often they get their way after evidence from all sides has been heard.
(The Sun, 18 September 1996: 18)
The last sentence is printed in italics in order to suggest a feeling of outrage. Yet
why should we feel outraged that an independent panel has come to a decision after
hearing evidence from all sides? Regardless of your views on school discipline, the
fact is that The Sun did not give the pupils a chance to put their cases, but it did
identify them and potentially damage their futures. The story would have had just
as much impact without naming them.
The story is, of course, newsworthy. Teachers going on strike to prevent a child
being returned to school by the legally appointed authority raises a number of pol-
itical issues of which we should be aware and also raises a number of human issues
which would be of interest to the average reader. With 12,500 or so exclusions in
English schools in 1995 (The Sun, 18 September 1996: 18), it is hardly surprising
that there would be a few cases where the independent appeals panels, to which the
pupil and parents can take their case if they think the child was wrongly or unfairly
excluded, should decide that the head teacher was wrong to exclude the child. It is
also not surprising that half a dozen or so of these cases should upset the teachers
who think the appeals panel has got it wrong. But does the media need to name the
children involved in order to examine the issues fully? In other cases, naming works
the other way around. In one case:
A teenage tearaway who has committed a catalogue of 1,000 offences was finally sent to secure
accommodation yesterday.
Senior police officers in Durham had expressed their frustration that the 15year-old – known as
Boomerang Boy – was consistently freed by courts almost as quickly as he was arrested. They
complained that he was back on the streets committing crime as soon as he was out of the youth
court doors. (Daily Telegraph, 13 February 1999)
The courts then ordered that, under the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 1997, the boy
could be named, but his picture could not be used (see Press Gazette, 26 March
1999: 8).
Victims
Journalists need to consider carefully how they approach a child who has been the
victim of a crime, accident or other event. Sensitivity is extremely important and a
good journalist will consider resisting the temptation to squeeze information out of
a minor, even if the child is accompanied by a responsible adult. In these cases, it is
often the interview itself, rather than the publication or broadcast of the child’s
name, that involves difficult moral decisions, although naming them should be given
serious thought as well.
The PCC offered advice to journalists about identifying victims in an editorial in
its October–November 1993 report. The editorial was particularly concerned with
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the difficulties raised by the publication of pictures and the ability to identify victims
even when faces are obscured.
Editors should consider carefully whether or not their pictures offer clues, albeit unwittingly, that
will allow some readers to put a name to the individual concerned. Such clues may be found in
unusual hairstyles or in distinctive clothing. They may also be found in pictures that illustrate a
particular relationship between the victims and family members, friends or locations. The choice of
colour photography instead of black and white could also lead to easier identification in some
cases. (PCC 1993: 5)
The Commission suggested that while black and white photographs may not be
the complete answer, silhouettes may reduce the probability of identification. The
Commission also suggested consultation beforehand to ensure that the subject
chooses hairstyle and clothing with care. The context in which the picture appears
may also be an important consideration. Cropping and editing may allow a picture
to be used in a way that reduces the potential for identification and electronic
manipulation of pictures may also be useful.
In another PCC complaint, a mother said that the Express on Sunday, Daily
Express, Scottish Daily Mail and Daily Record had all used a story about her
daughter that invaded her privacy. The daughter had been diagnosed as suffering
from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of BSE, and all of these newspapers
ran stories about her and her illness which identified her. The PCC upheld the com-
plaints against each paper saying: ‘Publication of the identity of the patient was not
essential to informing the public of the vital information about the illness and diag-
nosis, and indeed any doubts about the diagnosis’ (PCC 1997: 10).
Vulnerable adults
Although nearly all children need to be considered as vulnerable groups before

writing about them, there are also a number of adults who need special consider-
ation because they are particularly vulnerable in some way. They could be related
to celebrities or notorious criminals, they could be recently bereaved or involved in
some major story that has left them traumatised or they could be disabled or men-
tally ill.
Adult victims of crime

The only clause the PCC Code has on victims states: ‘The press must not identify victims
of sexual assault or publish material likely to contribute to such identification unless
there is adequate justification and they are legally free to do so’ (PCC Code of Practice,
2005). Since, in most cases, the media is at liberty to do so, being the victim of crime is
to lay oneself open to having one’s privacy invaded. The BBC does not have much to
say about victims, suggesting only that journalists think of ways to minimise distress.
Journalists need always to remember that victims of crime are not there by choice
and rarely through any fault of their own. If the report will make things worse for
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the victim, then the journalist should think carefully about how the report should
be handled. I discussed in Chapter 6 how most people see victims of events as main-
taining a stronger right to privacy than, say, criminals.
When plans were first drawn up to make it an offence to report the name of a
rape victim, many editors condemned it absolutely. Yet some thirty years later, there
is little evidence that it has damaged the press’s freedom to report the court cases.
Except in the case of a celebrity victim, the inability to report the name makes little
difference to the newsworthiness of the story.
Victims of crime and disaster also need to be handled with care, although naming
them is often not a problem. Getting to know the person, particularly if they come
from our home town or have some other connection, is important in giving a con-
nection between reader and subject, but the method of interview and the way the
story is written or broadcast should be handled sensitively.
Case study 8.2 Reporting crime

The Sport had its knuckles rapped by the PCC in November 1991 for publishing an
inaccurate report of a rape that could have led to the identification of the victim. The
PCC says in its report:
The Daily Sport’s report of a rape trial included prurient and offensive details of
evidence, the publication of which was likely to cause additional distress to the
victim . . .
Misleadingly it omitted an important part of the victim’s evidence which made
it clear that a particular act which had been threatened did not take place. By
reporting her attacker’s address inaccurately, the paper increased the risk that she
would be identified by readers who knew her. This possibility was made more dis-
tressing by the paper’s unnecessarily detailed account of the attack on her. (PCC,
Report No. 4, 1991: 6)
The Commission expressed its profound sympathy with the victim and upheld the
complaint.
However, the Press Council rejected a complaint from a woman that the Redditch
Indicator and the Redditch Advertiser had irresponsibly published a picture of her when
she was the subject of persistent harassment (Press Council, 1985: 166). The woman
was a police officer, although this was incidental. The man pestered her with 5,000
phone calls for which he was jailed for nine months. The two local papers published
pictures of her. The court had made no order not to publish photographs and the news-
papers in question claimed they had no reason to know that the defendant was unaware
of what the woman looked like. Although in this case it is difficult to blame the news-
papers which merely made a natural assumption that the defendant knew what the
victim looked like, it is a suitable cautionary tale.
Protection of victims and relatives of criminals

Whilst those accused of crime have the right to be presumed innocent, journalists
must never forget that their victims or relatives and friends are also innocent. This
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group of people is often dragged into the public domain through no fault of their
own. Picked, often at random, to be victims, or being related to a criminal, their
troubles can be magnified first by being harassed by journalists and secondly by the
way their story is subsequently treated by the press or on the airwaves. The BBC has
a lengthy section in its Editorial Guidelines about reporting crime. Much of it con-
cerns the presentation of programmes such as Crimewatch and Police, Camera,
Action! where guidance is given about the presentation of crime and violence in a
way that sets it into context and makes it clear that it is an exceptional event. It
covers items such as not using incidental music, taking care about camera angles
and not using slow motion to linger on dramatic events. It also gives advice on inter-
viewing serious criminals and the need to avoid glamorising their actions.
Friends and relatives of the criminal and the victim are some of the first
people that journalists approach to get information. These are usually people
dragged into the limelight very much against their will. Imagine the shock of
Dunblane killer Thomas Hamilton’s mother. Almost minutes after the police
informed her not only that her son was dead, but also that he took sixteen chil-
dren and a teacher with him, the media was on the telephone. No wonder she
looked odd on her television interview. She was in shock. This is not so much
an invasion of her privacy as merely insensitive behaviour. She is not directly
involved with the crime, but with the criminal. While it would be acceptable to
quiz her about her son, with the same sensitivity that a journalist would use
with any grieving person, it would not be right to cause her distress. The BBC
said: ‘Although full reporting of the facts surrounding notorious criminals may
properly entail reporting of their family circumstances, we should always try not
to cause unnecessary distress to the innocent’ (BBC Producers’ Guidelines,
1996). The PCC Code of Conduct has a strong clause to cover these problems.
It says: ‘Relatives or friends of persons convicted or accused of crime should not
generally be identified without their consent, unless they are genuinely relevant
to the story’ (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html (accessed 21/7/06)). This
does not mean that friends and relatives can be assured of strict anonymity,
because this is one of the clauses identified by the PCC as having a public
interest defence, but it does mean that a paper has to have a good reason for
publishing.
Mental health
The PCC in its January–February 1994 report reminded journalists that
although many patients at special hospitals such as Rampton, Ashworth,
Carstairs and Broadmoor are convicted criminals, a number have not com-
mitted any crime and are not detained for treatment because of an appearance
before a court. It explained that the 1959 Mental Health Act requires that all
such patients, criminal or otherwise, are designated ‘patients’ rather than ‘pris-
oners’. The staff serve in their medical capacity and are not prison officers,
even though some may be members of the Prison Officers’ Association (PCC
1994: 5).
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Case study 8.3 Mental health and the media

There is considerable concern among health professionals, researchers and patients
about the descriptions used in the media of mental health patients and the effects these
have on public perceptions (see Philo, 1996). Certainly, considerable thought and sen-
sitivity should be applied to the terminology used. Phrases such as ‘psycho’, ‘sicko’,
‘nutter’, ‘maniac’ and ‘loony’ do appear regularly, especially in the tabloid press, but
should never be used to describe those with mental health conditions. This was spelt
out by the PCC in their January 1996 report when the Daily Star was found to have
committed two breaches of clause 13 of the Code of Practice (discrimination) (see
Appendix 1). The first case involved a patient at Broadoak hospital who cycled up to
the late Princess of Wales during a visit and asked for a kiss. The Daily Star described
him as ‘a raving nutter’ and a ‘loony’ (9 November 1995 and 10 November 1995). The
Commission agreed that ‘to describe a person suffering from a mental illness as a
“raving nutter” and a “loony” could not in the circumstances of this case be other than
pejorative in breach of clause 15 of the code’ (PCC 1996: 17).
In the same PCC report, a complaint about a story in the Daily Star was also
upheld. The article (Daily Star, 26 January 1996) reported that there had been a com-
plaint to the patients’ council about beef being served at the canteen at Ashworth
hospital despite the BSE scare. The newspaper reported that ‘crazies at a top security
mental hospital refused to eat beef – because it might send them MAD’. The report
included a spoof menu with such items as ‘bread and nutter pudding’ and ‘chicken in
a basket case’. The PCC said: ‘The commission did not accept the newspaper’s
response as the descriptions contained in the article were applied to all patients at
Ashworth. It considered the language to be pejorative . . .’ (PCC 1996: 19).
The National Union of Journalists released guidelines on mental health reporting on

21 June 1997. Called ‘Shock treatment’, the leaflet encourages journalists to cover stories
about mental health in a more enlightened way. The guidelines advise journalists to avoid
words such as ‘nutter’ and ‘psycho’ and explain that those who use the services prefer to
be called mental health service users or survivors rather than patients. The Health
Education Authority have also issued a report, ‘Mental Health and the National Press’,
which gives a number of recommendations. The report showed that 40 per cent of all
daily national tabloid coverage and 45 per cent of all Sunday national tabloid coverage
of mental health contained pejorative terms such as ‘loony’, ‘mad’ and ‘crazy’ (Ward
1997: 14). The report recommends that editors should avoid using stigmatising language
and not use clinical terms such as schizophrenia in non-specific or derogatory ways.
Those involved in disasters

People involved in disasters, the same as those who have been bereaved, are not there
by choice. Their involvement in the story has been thrust upon them and they would
prefer to be elsewhere. Often they have lost a loved one or are in a situation where
a loved one’s life is in the balance. They may have lost their home, or their job, or
both. They are at a particularly vulnerable time and often cannot think straight.
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This does not mean that journalists should not interview them; they are often at
the centre of a story that is of major importance, but it does mean journalists should
treat them with particular sensitivity.
Media packs should be avoided and harassment should be kept to a minimum. If
a person does not want to talk, the journalist should respect that and find another
interviewee. Questions should be handled with particular care to ensure they do not
leave the person looking foolish or indeed the journalist looking foolish.
‘Would you say you were devastated?’ is an insensitive question to ask someone
whose family has been killed in a tsunami that flattened their home and took their
job. But more gentle questions about their family or their home would allow them
to talk coherently and convey to the reader or viewer the enormity of the disaster.
Domestic violence
The addresses of women’s refuges should normally be kept confidential in order to
protect the victims of domestic violence.
Suicide
Coverage of suicide is a difficult area and requires sensitivity. Journalists should
avoid trying to over-simplify the story. Often the act of suicide is the final act of a
long chain of events and journalists need to make it clear that people do not nor-
mally use suicide as an answer to one problem but as an answer to a string of
problems or events. The desire to get the story should not reduce it to its simple cul-
mination. Reports of suicide should avoid glamorising the event or providing very
graphic or technical detail of the method for fear of others copying how it was done.
It is important to remember that there may well be close family who will read the
story or see it and their feelings should be considered.
Discrimination
The key thing to remember when writing about minority groups, whether they are
ethnic minorities, refugees or disabled people, is to ensure you only mention their
differentiating characteristics if it is vital to the story. A story about a wheelchair
user not being able to access a shop because of a flight of stairs would not make
sense without mentioning that the person was a wheelchair user. On the other hand,
saying that someone who had been fined for speeding was Asian or an asylum
seeker would be unnecessary. No journalist would mention that the person was a
British citizen, or white or able-bodied. Of course, if an able-bodied person was
fined for parking in a disabled parking space, then it would be important to mention
that.
The PCC Code of Practice has a clause on discrimination:
12 (i) The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual’s race, colour,
religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability. (ii) Details of
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an individual’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must
be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.
The PCC is quite strict about taking complaints only from individuals under this
clause. If you are not the person mentioned in the story, you can’t complain about
it.
The NUJ also has a clause on discrimination:
A journalist shall only mention a person’s age, sex, race, colour, creed, illegitimacy, disability,
marital status, or sexual orientation if this information is strictly relevant. A journalist shall neither
originate nor process material which encourages discrimination, ridicule, prejudice or hatred on any
of the above-mentioned grounds.
Ofcom and the BBC have similar clauses.

There are two key points to remember here. The first is that a journalist should
not be producing material that encourages hatred or violence and the second is to
only use details of a person’s race, colour and so on if it is strictly relevant. The
detail is of course the kind of material that might spark discrimination solely on
those grounds.
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Chapter 9
D E C I D I N G WHAT TO P U B LI S H
This chapter examines the specific problems facing journalists

involved in the editing process, including:
• Ethical decisions about what to publish

• Considerations about where to publish it
• Any ethical issues involved in how the material is used
All newspapers and broadcast outlets have to make regular decisions about what to
publish. Earlier chapters have looked in detail at what makes news and therefore
what influences editors in their decisions on what to publish. Newsworthiness, the
space available and a balance of stories all play their part in deciding what finally
finds its way into a newspaper or broadcast, but the suppression or exaggeration of
stories (either in the way they are written or by the way they are used) can be deter-
mined by the personal views or political stance of the editor or publisher. This is
particularly true in newspapers and magazines where there is no legal obligation to
remain impartial.
It is not unusual for a newspaper or magazine to follow a particular political or
cultural line in its coverage. If it is to continue to hold the trust of its readers, then
it must attempt to be truthful and accurate, but there is little evidence that strict
impartiality has any bearing on people’s trust rating. Indeed, it may well be that they
are more likely to trust a paper with similar cultural biases to their own, provided
that the stories it does cover are accurate and that the bias is only obvious in the
choice of sources and presentation and context of the material.
Suppression
Editors and journalists sometimes have to decide when not to publish a story. Brian
Whitaker, in News Limited: Why You Can’t Read all About it (1981), goes into this
in depth and his book is well worth reading. In one example he explains why no
local newspaper is likely to go upsetting the local status quo:
It is in coverage of council affairs that local papers are usually at their worst. You only have to
read the papers to learn that councillors are as public-spirited, well-informed, thoughtful, eloquent,
dedicated and high-principled a body as you could ever hope to meet – but then a paper does have
to be responsible. To reprint verbatim the speech of Councillor X, a former mayor who has served
the borough for nigh on 50 years, would let the world know that the old boy has completely lost
his marbles – and that would be cruel. To record the number of times the mayor has to be
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150 9 • Deciding what to publish
corrected on procedural matters by the clerk would imply that he is not fit for his office – and that
would be disrespectful. To list the financial interests of all the members who get business from the
council would suggest that they are out to feather their own nests – and that would be a slur. In
short, to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the council would be
nothing less than to embark on a campaign to discredit the whole of local government – and that
would be grossly irresponsible. (Whitaker 1981: 39)
Few local newspapers or radio stations are going to risk retaliatory action by
local advertisers, who might damage revenue, or local dignitaries or business people,
who might hit circulation figures or the ability of reporters to report on local stories.
Whilst national and some regional media outlets are better able to withstand these
pressures, they have to be certain that the story (or a succession of such stories) will
increase circulation more than the damage such attacks might do to revenue.
Sometimes, of course, there may be a more noble reason to suppress a story.
Kidnaps are rarely reported in Britain before the police have caught the perpetra-
tors. Fortunately, this is a very rare crime in Britain anyway, but it can be argued
that the responsible position taken by the media has helped. If a kidnap happens,
the police will keep the media informed provided they agree only to use the story
once the police approve – usually after the victim has been freed. This gives the
media good information on what happened, without using the story and endan-
gering the victim’s life.
Stories are often suppressed, or the information that is known about them is
limited, during wars. In the Iraq War, for instance, the media was briefed away from
the front line to prevent stories about planned attacks being transmitted back home
being intercepted by the enemy. Sometimes, journalists need to go along with that.
For instance, a story that the army was just about to launch an attack across the
front line at such and such a place with 200 men set to target a military base at X
would be good copy but it would not improve the chances of those 200 soldiers
returning alive. Journalists have to decide whether to protect those lives, even
though it may mean using the story later or with only part of the information, or
not. This is an exercise in utilitarianist logic. The high risk of harming 200 people,
possibly fatally, outweighs the small rise in happiness for millions of readers in
knowing the truth. But what about loyalty to the reader? Does this go by the board
because of our loyalty to the subject of the story?
Sometimes, of course, stories are suppressed because they do not suit the purpose
of the media outlet carrying them. The Daily Express, for instance, is much keener
on using stories that show the Labour party in a bad light than those that are
unhelpful to the Conservative party. The Daily Mirror takes the opposite view, whilst
The Sun does not carry stories which suggest that BSkyB is anything less than the
perfect TV station because both are owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International.
Advertising as editorial
A considerable amount of editorial these days seems to be advertising and this pres-
ents editors and journalists with problems. Pressure from advertisers to cover a
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Suppression 151
particular story or not cover a story can put journalists on the spot over their choice
of loyalties. If it puts a reporter’s job on the line, it can hardly be surprising if loyalty
to self and family means journalists give in to the pressure to print what they are
told. If an editor is supportive, then they may well see their loyalty to the reader to
tell the truth as paramount. The water becomes a good deal muddier when an
advertiser takes what is known as an advertising feature. These can take several
forms.
An advertorial is a small advert supported by accompanying editorial copy,
usually describing the advertiser and its wares. This is an attempt to add editorial
authenticity to an advertisement. The entire space, including that used for the edi-
torial, is usually bought by the customer and then filled with the advertisement and
the editorial. Often this editorial is written by a journalist. Journalists generally do
not like writing these kinds of items because of the pressures to write supportive
material.
An advertising feature or advertising supplement is usually editorial copy about
a topic which is supported by adverts on a similar theme. The advertisers are told
what the subject area of the editorial is beforehand. An advertising supplement on
health and beauty in a woman’s magazine, for instance, might well attract adver-
tisers in the health and beauty field. Occasionally, an advertising supplement is just
a very large advertorial, where there is only one advertiser whose products are at the
centre of the editorial material. Many of the larger retailers use this method of pro-
moting their wares in the quality monthly magazines in the run-up to Christmas.
Advertising features are also often written by journalists. These do not tend to be
quite so difficult as the subjects are much more general and it is easier to write some-
thing fair and truthful. Often though, there is pressure to add the names of
advertisers to the copy. Sometimes copy for ad features comes from the PR or adver-
tising agency. This has then to be edited and laid out in the newspaper’s standard
style. Journalists who do this work are also under pressure to present the material
in a favourable light.
The increase in the number of advertising features used by the regional and
national press has started to distort the way a number of reporters view their
responsibilities. Constantly writing material that is, to all intents and purposes,
advertising copy means that many reporters writing such features see it as their
role to put the advertiser in the best possible light in an article which is intended
to look like part of the editorial with all the qualities that that implies about accu-
racy, balance and fairness. Because the advertising feature purports to be
editorial, the reporter should maintain the standards that apply to editorial. This
does not always go down well with advertisers or with advertising departments
which tend to see the reporter’s concerns as being over-scrupulous. But where
material is masquerading as editorial, then the editorial standards need to apply
or the paper risks damaging its editorial reputation. Advertising features are not
a problem for television, although the growth of programme sponsorship could
become one. The use of brand labels in programmes is a problem, however, and
although the BBC no longer goes to the lengths of obscuring brand names, it does
attempt to avoid using them. The BBC’s guidelines say:
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We need to be able to reflect the real world and this will involve referring to commercial products,
organisations and services in our output. We must avoid any undue prominence or giving the
impression that we are promoting or endorsing products, organisations or services.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/editorial/productprominen.shtml
(accessed May 2006))
Advertisers also latch on to editorial by sponsoring pages or programmes. In

broadcasting this tends to be confined to drama programmes or weather broadcasts,
but it can only be a matter of time before food shows are sponsored by food manu-
facturers and motor shows by car makers. Newspaper pages tend to be limited in
their sponsorship more by lack of opportunity than by principle. Favourites for
sponsorship are the TV page, weather and wedding reports.
All of the methods mentioned above for displaying advertising as editorial copy
are favoured by advertisers as it lends their adverts the authority and credibility that
goes with the editorial. They become more believable. Finance companies are par-
ticularly fond of taking advertising supplements in the tabloid nationals; local
papers often have ad features for local pub openings. These methods have become
more and more popular over the past few years as it means adverts are more likely
to be read. This adds to the journalist’s fear of undue influence. If a big retailer is
supporting an advertising feature, how can the journalist write a true review of that
particular product? Often the product the journalist is writing about is known to
the journalist only through the press information material sent by the manufacturer.
How can the journalist give a fair assessment from the manufacturer’s own press
information?
The pressure for a journalist to write a piece that is supportive of the advertiser
regardless of the real situation is extremely strong. The NUJ takes the view that
journalists’ duty is clear: they should write an accurate, truthful article. But loyal-
ties are often stretched when reporters are asked to produce stories to advertising
briefs. In one provincial newspaper I was told about, reporters were expected to
write restaurant reviews from a copy of the menu and perhaps a quick telephone
call to the restaurateur. They are also expected to ring back and read the copy over
the phone for approval. Regular checks with my students over the years show that
in their experience on work placements this practice is growing. This makes a non-
sense of any pretence that such features are attempting to be truthful. No reporter
can give a truthful report of food they have not tasted, in a review they have to
approve with the advertiser. Yet readers are often misled into believing that such
reports are as ethically sound as the material in the rest of the editorial sections of
the paper. Most readers are unaware of the difference between editorial and adver-
torial copy. Both the Newspaper Society and the NUJ advise that advertorials and
advertising features should be clearly marked as advertising or advertising features,
and journalists involved in editing and laying out such copy should ensure this
happens.
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Identification 153
Identification
Don’t publish car registrations and other identifications. Unless there is a particular
reason for publishing the registration number of a vehicle or a house number or any
other identification sign, journalists should normally ensure these are pixelated in
pictures or video. This is particularly the case if the registration number is of a
vehicle that is of some particular significance such as belonging to a celebrity or a
police officer. Not identifying cars or houses ensures that simple mistakes that could
lead to misidentification can’t be made.
Publishing names and addresses

Journalists like to use names in their stories because they add veracity to the article.
Sometimes of course the name is the article. A story about something happening to
President Clinton may well be newsworthy whereas if the same thing happens to
me, it will not be. Also, if I were to say we should declare war on Australia, then no
one would do more than look at me oddly. If Tony Blair were to say it, then there
would be banner headlines.
David Randall explains the journalistic requirement to name people very well,
with an anecdote about his first week in the job:
by a combination of luck and my determination to make an impact [I] got on to a good story about
river pollution. I went off, did the research and then rushed back to the office dreaming of the
accolades that would be coming my way when I turned in the story. ‘What the hell is this?’ shouted
the news editor when he read it. ‘Where are all the names?’ I had been so thrilled with the story I
had forgotten to ask the names of the people I interviewed. There were lots of good quotes, but all
of them were from ‘worried resident’, ‘water engineer’, ‘safety inspector’ etc. (Randall 1996: 33)
Randall’s story is good lesson for any young journalist to learn. But journalists need
also to be aware that there are times when names do not need to be used and some-
times should not be used. It is regular practice for the police and armed services to
refuse to give names of serving officers and to ask the media to refrain from pub-
lishing them. Since publication could, in some circumstances, put officers at risk
from revenge attacks, most media consider complying with these requests if the cir-
cumstances seem reasonable. The media is also asked not to publish detailed
addresses of such groups and it is often easier to acquiesce about an address rather
than a name. Other groups may also need to have their addresses and movements
treated with care. In a judgment in 1985, the Press Council upheld a complaint
against the Kent and Sussex Courier for publishing the address of a bank security
guard injured in a raid. It says: ‘It was improper to publish his address, thus placing
him and his family potentially in further danger’ (Press Council 1985: 165).
The PCC published some guidance to editors about publishing names and
addresses in its August 1992 report (see Exhibit 9.1).
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Exhibit 9.1 Publishing names and addresses

The PCC places responsibility on journalists to ‘discourage, and certainly not
encourage, the harassment of individuals named in stories and features in their publi-
cations’ (PCC, Report No. 12, 1992: 5). The PCC supported the practice of regional
papers, which like to publish street names to stress the local relevance of a story, but do
not publish house numbers or names in order to reduce unwanted attention and
because: ‘It reduces the possibility of error: if you do not publish the number, you
cannot get it wrong’ (ibid.).
The PCC reminded editors and other journalists to use their common sense and
careful judgement on the use of addresses:
It is true that in the case of prominent people addresses are readily available but the
press is not under an obligation to make it easy for cranks and criminals by saving
them the bother of researching telephone books and directories. Newspapers should
not assist in identifying targets for opprobrium, far less for life-threatening atten-
tion, and there is a common-sense obligation upon editors to avoid endangering
families by publishing actual addresses unless they constitute an essential part of the
story. (PCC, Report No. 7, 1992: 5)
The PCC gave as an example the Evening Standard, London, which, after giving the
address of a prominent individual’s weekend home in Wales, suggested: ‘He had better
not tell the Welsh nationalists or they will come and burn it down’ (ibid.: 6). The PCC
held this to be an infringement of the person’s privacy.
Perversely, the PCC decided that there had been no breach of the Code of Practice
in 1999 following a complaint from Eric Forth MP and the parents of the five suspects
in the Stephen Lawrence case against New Nation and the Sunday Telegraph. New
Nation had published an article giving the suspects’ addresses, together with robust
comments about enhancing their ‘facial features’. The PCC found that the robust com-
ments were on a matter of public interest and dismissed complaints about harassment
and incitement to racial hatred. They also dismissed complaints about invasion of
privacy against both New Nation and the Sunday Telegraph saying: ‘In view of the wide
reporting of the case and the fact that the information about the complainants’
addresses was already in the public domain, the commission did not find that there was
a breach of the code’ (Press Gazette, 7 May 1999: 6). One can’t help wondering if com-
missioners were swayed by concern about the opprobrium a decision to uphold the
complaint would have heaped on the Commission’s head.
Various groups of people and professionals, who might be considered at par-

ticular risk if their addresses or their movements are published, include the following:
• People in the public eye.
• Judges and magistrates.
• Police officers.
• Members of the armed forces.
• People accused of serious crimes, and their relatives.
• Aids victims and their care workers.
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Identification 155
Journalists should also refrain from publishing the addresses of refuges and shel-
ters for those who have been the victims of domestic violence and abuse. This would
put the people seeking refuge and the workers in the refuges in danger. Indeed, the
very purpose of the refuges is invalidated if addresses are made public.
Naming lottery winners

The National Lottery has captured the interest of the nation. Many people want to
know more about those who win millions of pounds on the lottery, and newspapers
often pursue lottery winners in order to satisfy their readers’ curiosity.
Case study 9.2 Winning the lottery

The first rollover lottery jackpot was won on 10 December 1994 by a resident of
Blackburn, Lancashire. The media’s interest was intense, but the winner did not give
permission for his name to be revealed. The organisers of the lottery, Camelot, said the
winner had requested that quite detailed information be released to the media but that
Camelot decided it would be more prudent to release only information about the
region in which he lived, the size of his family, that he was a factory worker, what paper
he read and that he watched satellite television.
Two national newspapers, the Mirror and The Sun (12 December 1994) offered
£10,000 rewards for additional information. Camelot obtained a High Court injunction
preventing the naming of the winner but this was challenged and overturned. The
Mirror and The Sun then decided not to publish the name and made much about their
decision in their papers. The editor of The Sun made it clear at the time that he had
been influenced by the strength of feeling of readers. However, the News of the World,
Yorkshire on Sunday and the Sunday Mercury all identified the winner the following
Sunday.
Although the winner himself did not complain, his MP, Jack Straw, did and wrote
to the PCC. Labour’s media spokesperson, Chris Smith MP, also wrote, asking the
Commission to adjudicate over the practice of offering money for information. There
were also thirty-two letters from members of the public on the issue. The Commission
asked editors for their views. The Sun responded that whilst they had decided to cease
the practice of ‘bounty money’, they would certainly fight any move for a blanket
restriction on naming lottery winners. The editor said he ‘would have no hesitation in
identifying winners such as the Queen, the prime minister, Myra Hindley or the
Archbishop of Canterbury, irrespective of whether anonymity had been requested’
(PCC, Report No. 29, 1995: 27).
The PCC condemned the decision of some newspapers to offer rewards and went
on to draw up guidelines for the future (see Exhibit 9.3).
The media’s treatment of lottery winners has been mixed, but there does seem to
be a streak of invasive jealousy about much of the coverage. Mark Gardiner won
the lottery on Saturday, 10 June 1995. By 13 June, The Sun had branded him a
‘Lotto Rat’ and exposed his private life to the world. The newspaper claimed he was
a heavy-drinking womaniser who had had three wives and two mistresses and was
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Exhibit 9.3 The National Lottery: P C C guidance

• The press should generally respect the wishes of a winner of the National Lottery
to remain anonymous if he or she so wishes.
• The press should not seek to obtain information about winners from the operator of
the National Lottery in breach of any duty of confidentiality which the operator
owes to winners under the terms of its licence.
• The press should not seek to obtain information about winners who have requested
anonymity, from their family, friends or work colleagues through any form of harass-
ment contrary to clause 8 of the Code of Practice (this refers to the old Code of
Practice; for the new code, see Appendix 1).
• It may be permissible for the press to identify a winner of the National Lottery who
has requested anonymity if such can be justified in the public interest under clause
18 of the [old] Code of Practice; the size of the win alone would not be sufficient jus-
tification for such disclosure.
• The press should not offer rewards for information about the identity or private life
of a lottery winner. Such offers can only be justified in extreme cases where there is
prima facie evidence that a serious fraud or scandal is involved.
• The Commission believes that the press cannot be expected to act as scapegoat in
maintaining the anonymity of winners, irrespective of all circumstances, including
the actions of Camelot or the winners themselves. Accordingly, this guidance will be
applied by the Commission in the context of any future complaints after taking into
account the circumstances of each particular case.
(PCC, Report No. 29, 1995: 32)
now living with someone else’s wife. Another lottery winner was photographed on
holiday at an exotic location with a group of friends. Allegations were made about
the ‘lively’ behaviour.
Fair trials
One of the major human rights is the right to a fair trial. Together with the right to
be presumed innocent, these have a direct bearing on what can be reported at a
criminal trial. The law in the UK limits what can be written about a criminal event
and the arrest of a person suspected of committing it until they come to trial. This
is intended to prevent a would-be jury being adversely influenced by what is written
before the trial. There is some debate as to whether there is any influential effect
from publishing prior to a trial. Researchers in the USA, where pre-trial publicity is
allowed, generally found in several research projects that there was very little evi-
dence of influence in any prior publicity. Very few cases were of such public interest
that they had very much pre-trial publicity and often where this did happen,
research suggested, juries were more likely to be influenced to take a detached and
neutral view rather than following whatever line was taken in the pre-trial publicity.
(Bruschke and Loges 2004: 135–7). UK law, however, limits what can be written
until the trial itself and then a full and contemporaneous report can be given. One
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of the elements to be strongly considered is the amount of coverage. Coverage is

unlikely to be fair, if only the prosecution case is published, for instance. This could
mean having to plan to cover a major trial over several days, or even weeks, in order
to ensure fair coverage.
Other courts
The government has recently decided to issue a discussion paper about the possi-
bility of opening up family courts to reporting. The government believes that the
public should be able to see how evidence is weighed up and judgments made in the
family courts, but the name of the children and the family will still be kept confi-
dential in order to protect the family’s privacy (Harman 2006: 7).
The government is also proposing to make changes in the coroners’ courts.
Following representations from organisations such as the Child Bereavement Trust,
the draft Coroner Reform Bill includes the power for coroners to prevent the pub-
lication of the deceased person’s name (ibid.).
Issues for print
Newspapers and broadcasting are about more than gathering information: they are
also concerned with how the information is presented. The target audience plays a
major part in decisions made here. Should a newspaper choose a highly graphic
approach suitable for an audience that is wary of too much printed word or should
the emphasis be on presenting large blocks of text in a way that can be easily assim-
ilated? Should broadcasters aim at a lively production with short takes and plenty of
action or can the target audience appreciate longer, more static displays? The jour-
nalist also needs to consider such subjects as taste and decency. At what stage does
an image become merely distasteful and no longer enlightening? In addition, there is
the new opportunity to bias or slant the information that its presentation offers.
Presentation of material for print

Moral problems do not end when the text is written. Source-checking should con-
tinue throughout, but there is also a new range of problems. Once copy is written
and presented to the editor or sub-editors, further decisions are made about its
future. A decision will be taken about where the story is to be displayed. Other
decisions will be taken about how it is to be displayed and how it is to be angled.
It may well be that the story already has the correct angle, but if not, it may well be
rewritten. New angles are added for several reasons. The most important is the market
approach of the product. If a newspaper sees its target audience as middle-aged women
with middle-class traditional views, it will target the type of news it uses and the way it
presents it to be attractive to that audience. Take a look at the Daily Mail to see how this
works. A newspaper may also choose its news and the way it presents it in order to
pursue a political or commercial agenda. The Mirror, for instance, likes copy that
embarrasses the Conservative Party whereas the Mail prefers to attack the Labour Party.
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During this editing process, inaccuracies or bias might well be introduced into
copy that had been error-free. This might be accidental, in the attempt to make the
story more lively. Often a reporter will have been ambiguous because it has not been
possible to guarantee the accuracy of a particular fact, yet an editor might well
rewrite the careful phrase into something more dramatic, but less accurate.
Occasionally, in order to make a story ‘stand up’ or appear more dramatic or
exciting, facts will be stretched and distorted. Stories are also presented in a dif-
ferent style. A single piece of copy might be split into several smaller articles, each
with their own new introduction. Headings have to be written, along with other
pieces of copy, that give the opportunity for further errors to creep in. Headline
writing is a difficult art. They have to be bright and lively yet still reflect the story
accurately. They must also be accurate in themselves – all this in just half a dozen
words or less. Whether it is ‘MPs in a new sleaze wheeze’ or ‘Minister in new sleaze
claim’ (to give two invented, but plausible, examples), the temptation to go over the
top is high.
Finally, pictures are added. Choices here add a new dimension to the decision-
making process. Pictures need to be closely linked with the story. Some will have
been taken especially for the story and care needs to be taken to ensure that the
picture is of who or what the journalist thinks it is and that the caption accurately
conveys this. Often picture captions carry names that are spelt differently from the
way they are in the story. Library pictures are also a danger area. It is all too easy
to get a picture from a library of the wrong person. On 20 June 1996, the Guardian
carried an obituary of Vivian Ellis, the writer of the song ‘Spread a Little
Happiness’. Unfortunately it used a picture of Vivienne Ellis. Wrong sex, wrong
person. I did not get to see the correction carried later in the week, but I assume
there was one. All very embarrassing and potentially libellous in some instances.
The choice of picture offers yet another opportunity for presenting the story in
an untruthful way. Even a picture of a politician giving a speech can give very dif-
ferent slants to a story. The way the picture is cut, the gestures the politician is using
or the facial expressions can all give a perception that is wrong or at least mis-
leading. Politicians learn early on to take extreme care with facial gestures while
sitting on platforms. A row of photographers is just waiting for that funny gesture,
the drooping eyelids, the whispered aside or the signs of momentary boredom.
Many politicians have woken to find their breakfast spoiled by a picture of them-
selves on the front of the newspapers apparently deeply upset, when all they actually
did was briefly rub their eyes at the end of a long and tiring conference. Smiling for
six hours solid in case your picture is being taken is hard work.
Hoaxes
There is also the problem of new material offered for publication which later turns
out to be a hoax. There are several reasons why newspapers and broadcasters get
their fair share of bogus stories or hoaxes. One of the major reasons is that good
stories or pictures are worth money. Reductions of staff combined with a rise in
contributions from the public, many of whom now regularly carry relatively high-
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quality digital cameras and videos built into their mobile phones has meant that
many pictures or film clips of newsworthy events are now routinely used by news
media. This can lead the unscrupulous to send bogus pictures. The Guardian and
Sky TV fell victim in March 2006 when they reported a heath fire in Dorset. They
accompanied the story with a picture, which later turned out to be of a forest fire in
the US state of Montana six years before. Explaining the hoax to readers the next
week, Guardian readers’ editor Ian Mayes explained that The Guardian had
grabbed the picture from rolling news coverage on Sky TV, which had received the
image from a viewer. Mr Mayes said:
The Guardian report, addressing the picture, said: ‘Wild animals, silhouetted by the bright orange
inferno in a photograph taken by a local resident, were left to fend for themselves.’ The wild
animals in fact are elk, which, as one of my correspondents later that day put it, are rarely seen in
Dorset. I can sympathise both with Sky and with the Guardian picture desk for running this picture
in, so to speak, the heat of the moment. As the Guardian story made clear, the Dorset fire was a big
one, residents in the area had to be evacuated to safety, and it took 170 firefighters from Dorset
and neighbouring Hampshire to bring the fire under control. Sky showed the picture twice on
Sunday evening. A spokesperson told me: ‘It was one of several sent in by viewers. Once we had
established it was a hoax, we pulled it immediately. We do all we can to ensure that email images
sent in by viewers are genuine, but it’s inevitable that in a fast-breaking news environment such
photos occasionally slip past the checks and balances we put in place.’ The discovery was too late
to save the Guardian from also falling victim to the hoax.
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329443399-103677,00.html (accessed in May 2006))
In fact the picture was taken on 6 August 2000, on the east fork of the Bitterroot
River, Montana and the photographer was John McColgan, a fire behaviour analyst
from the Alaska Fire Service, according to one of Mr Mayes’ correspondents.
Juxtaposition of material
Care needs to be taken when working in print about which items on a page go
alongside other items. For instance, a story about bogus builders alongside an
advert for a respectable local building firm, could certainly bring complaints. A
prominent picture of a local person alongside a major headline about a criminal act
also needs to ensure the two cannot be accidentally linked.
Image manipulation
Image manipulation has always been a possibility, but the modern computer soft-
ware makes it very easy and very tempting to do for newspapers and magazines.
This subject was covered from the ethical point of view in Chapter 5, but should be
referred to here as a reminder that it would be unethical not just to manipulate the
content of the picture, but also to squeeze or stretch a picture in order to make it fit
a space. Making someone look fatter or thinner than they really are distorts the
truth, and might also offend the subject of the picture.
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Issues for broadcast
Broadcasting has a number of particular issues that do not apply to print. The use
of video and sound make TV and radio a much more urgent media and their closer
scrutiny by the law makes their need to be ethical that much stronger.
Presentation of material for broadcast

Broadcasting brings its own problems in terms of presentation of news packages.
Just as newspapers need attention-grabbing headlines that scream drama and sensa-
tion, so broadcasters needs to grab the viewers’ attention. The easiest and most
attractive way of doing this for television is with good pictures. Desperate to
provide interesting film to go with news reports, broadcast editors will often try to
build up the drama that seems to exist in video footage, whether it actually does or
not. Others are aware of this and can also manipulate it. Video from the House of
Commons, for instance, often shows smiling, supportive politicians posing on either
side of whoever is speaking. Often we find that the only people in the House are
those crowded around the spokespeople on the front bench as this makes the shot
look better for TV.
Covering disasters provides excellent picture coverage and the only ethical debate
is about how to cover it. Often TV will show foreign news, not because it will par-
ticularly interest viewers as such, but because it offers great pictures. We seem to get
extensive coverage of hurricanes when they hit the USA, for instance, because the
US networks are there to take the pictures and the pictures make good TV. In other
words, the pictures are available, cheap and are dramatic viewing. We rarely see pic-
tures of such hurricanes as they rip through the Caribbean as this would require a
film crew to be sent out especially, at high cost.
Providing good pictures is not so easy on an issue-based subject. Politicians have
long realised this and try their hardest to produce photogenic ideas that reduce
issues to images that can attract audiences both on TV and in still pictures. PR
companies will always try to present ideas as photogenically as possible. This has
the effect of reducing political debate to the level of jousting – plenty of action and
drama but not much understanding of the underlying principles. Party conferences
become places to attack the opposition rather than develop ideas because idea gen-
eration is represented in the media as political drama rather than political debate.
Discussions become wrangles, debates become clashes and passionate exchanges of
views become party splits. Television, forced by its regulators to be impartial, needs
to present an often complex issue, give detailed information about it and present the
two or three different viewpoints that surround it in a 30-second (or even 15-
second) package that needs to be exciting and visually attractive. It may be accurate,
but is it truthful? While such packages are usually unbiased, they are rarely able to
tell the whole story.
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Live questioning
There are a number of issues with regard to interviewing somebody live. Where at
all possible, any time available before the interview should be spent in research –
have you got their name right, what is their title, why are you interviewing them?
The journalist needs to be certain that informed consent has been given by the inter-
viewee to take part in such an interview. As a professor of journalism, I’m
occasionally asked to be interviewed and I am often amazed at how many journal-
ists do not bother to check on my precise credentials for being interviewed. In
common with many people I sit on several committees and hold different titles, all
of which concern journalism, but bring a different slant to my answers. The public
deserves to know which hat I am wearing during a particular interview.
The journalist also needs to fill the interviewee in on the line of questioning that
is to be followed. For a politician or someone else who is used to being interviewed
in this way, just the broadest outline is acceptable, but for someone who may have
no experience of the media at all, a more detailed description of the type of ques-
tions that will be asked gives them a chance to come up with a more focused answer.
John Sergeant, ITN’s political editor from 2000, in his memoirs Give Me Ten
Seconds tells of one woman who fainted away during questioning. He does not
specify if this was a live interview, but it does show that the strain of a television
appearance is high, particularly for those who are not used to it (Sergeant 2001: 241).
In another TV interview gaffe, Guy Goma, a graduate from the Congo, waiting
for a job interview was accidentally called onto a live business programme on BBC
news 24, instead of IT expert Guy Kewney. He then faced a two-minute grilling
on the Apple v Apple court case. His shock at realising he was on TV and was
being called by someone else’s name is readily apparent on his face and is likely to
be a staple ingredient of a whole future series of outtake-style TV shows. Indeed,
he has already picked up a small fan club and made other TV appearances
including the Jonathan Ross show. Although he was asked his name by the pro-
ducer, the mistake was not spotted until he was seated in the studio
(http://www.24dash.com/content/news/viewNews.php?navID=3&newsID=6270
(accessed 19/7/06)). Broadcasters also need to check archive material to ensure
that the picture being used to illustrate a story is of the right person, or the right
building. Just because the file name is right doesn’t mean it will be the right picture
or video.
Two-ways
The BBC has taken a strong line on two-ways ever since the Hutton report. Two-
ways on contentious issues are now seen as potentially dangerous. A two-way is
when the presenter in the studio interviews the station’s own correspondent about
the situation. It is used extensively in sport but also in news as a way of breaking
up the image of the static talking head of the presenter. However, it was Andrew
Gilligan’s unscripted comments on the Today programme’s 6.07 a.m. broadcast
that led eventually to the death of Dr David Kelly and the resignation of senior BBC
JOUR_C09.QXP 8/2/07 10:52 Page 162
figures. The problem with talking, unscripted, about a highly contentious issue is
that it is very easy to stray from the precise truth under the pressure. This can be
particularly true if other factors are added, such as an early start or an interview fol-
lowing a long and grueling trip to the news site.
Hidden cameras, hidden mics, etc.

Hidden cameras and microphones are a problem that particularly affects TV and
radio. Their use is clearly both intrusive and deceitful. Not only is the camera likely
to be recording material taking place in a private area or at least at a time when the
subject thinks they are in private (and if this is not the case, why use a hidden
camera?) but also the person concerned is being deceived because they will behave
with far less consideration than for their public persona. The very expression ‘letting
one’s hair down’ clearly illustrates that we all accept that our public persona may
well be very different from the one we assume when we know we are out of the
public gaze. Journalists therefore normally have a duty to make it clear to the
subject of an interview that they will be appearing on camera or that their speech is
being recorded. Failure to do this can only be justified by recording for a story that
it is in the public interest and where the information required can only be gathered
by using this method. This is a two-stage process. First the journalist must be certain
that the only way to get further evidence for this story is by using hidden cameras
and then the decision must be taken about whether the story is in the public interest.
Only if both these questions can be affirmed should the journalist proceed. In the
case of the BBC, permission also needs to be granted by the journalist’s editor.
CCTV and webcams are not strictly speaking hidden cameras, but they may well
be recording people without their knowledge and consent. Checks should be made
about copyright and permission before a clip from a CCTV camera is used. These
issues can also arise during what are known as ‘tag-along raids’, exercises by police
or security services at which a journalist and camera crew attends. Often these lead
to arrests where identity might well be a problem and so filming needs to be handled
with care.
Suicide
Ofcom has introduced some clear rules into its guidance about broadcasting
methods of suicide and harm. It also warns about the dangers of showing demon-
strations of exorcism, the occult, the paranormal and divination that purport to be
real and warns that they must be treated with due objectivity.
Simulated news or reconstructions need to be handled with considerable care.
They should always be clearly labelled as being reconstructions so that no viewer
can be under the illusion that they are real. It is also wise to make sure that library
archive material is clearly labelled as such.
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Choice of location
The choice of location for a broadcast journalist is also important from both a pro-
fessional and an ethical and legal viewpoint. The background and scene chosen
become part of the story and need to be considered carefully. It is possible to defame
someone by choosing your background badly. Since the background supports what
is being said, it can affect the truth of the report. The same is true of any props or
costumes that might be used. Fans of Drop the Dead Donkey, the realistic Channel
4 sitcom set in a TV newsroom, will have seen several episodes wrapped around the
dubious antics of ambitious tabloid TV reporter Damian Day as he attempts to spice
up his reports. In one memorable incident, his news editor accuses him of using an
apparently abandoned teddy bear as a symbol of pathos in a number of packages
from disasters around the world only to find that Damian has the teddy bear in his
bag, ready for the next assignment. Yet the news editor feels unable to sack him for
this unethical approach. As the station’s most popular reporter, Damian is looked
on with favour by managers with both eyes firmly on the viewing figures.
It is this twisting of the story by the sly use of props, backgrounds or costumes
that should be avoided. Try to set people in their natural habitats; if the story is
about a person’s work, try to film it in their workplace; if it is about their family,
then the home would be appropriate.
Background sounds and sound effects

In addition to the straight interview, the reporter can add sound effects or even
background music to a report. These need to be considered carefully. The insertion
of inappropriate sound effects or library video clips can give the incorrect
impression, slanting an interview one way or the other. In extreme cases, playing
‘evil’ music whenever the ‘baddy’ appears could turn a report into pantomime, but
care should be taken that more subtle effects don’t have a similar result. On the
other hand, some level of realism might be required. Taping a radio interview about
the closing of a swimming pool from the busy pool itself might be difficult. The
noise might prevent us hearing the subject. But playing a recording of the baths in
the background and adding a little echo to the interview might restore reality.
Birdsong and the laughter of children added to a human-interest piece about the
coming of summer might brighten things up, but other sound effects might give
completely the wrong impression.
Archive material of sound and video needs to be clearly identified as such. We
should be certain that material we may be seeing on the screen is not happening live,
but is rooted in the past. A simple caption describing it as library material is suffi-
cient.
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Issues for online
Online journalism is relatively new, but is already building up issues of its own
despite those who prefer to see this as virgin territory, a clean, new frontier where
anything goes and there are no rules. Weblogs, citizen journalism and interactivity
are key elements of online news and these bring particular problems for those
dealing with news websites. Moderators will need to ensure material submitted
interactively is suitable before it is published, in the same way as readers’ letters.
Another key issue for websites is the hyperlinks that take readers to other sites.
Direct links to other sites can provide additional content for the browser and
improve their experience. Such links can give much fuller information than the
home website. A news report on a new government initiative linking the reader to
the government’s own report and the opposition’s attacks on it can add much more
depth than the straight news report. It may even be more than the reader wants, but
it gives them a choice. However, links to sites that might sit outside the news
provider’s usual policy need to be handled with care. A story about neo-nazis that
takes the reader on to a neo-nazi site, for instance, may well be a hyperlink too far.
Decisions need to be taken before the link is made, according to predetermined site
policy.
A new issue that is facing traditional newspapers and online news sites is the risk
of jigsaw identification in defamation cases. One of the things a defamation com-
plainant must prove is that people would believe the article published is about them.
This is easy if a name or clear identity is published. Footballer Ashley Cole sued The
Sun and the News of the World for defamation following their use of a picture of
two men with their faces pixelated to hide their identity, who, the papers claimed,
were involved in a gay sex orgy. The footballer’s lawyer said they would produce
witnesses who believed that the person in the picture was Ashley Cole after
searching the internet and finding a copy of that picture, unpixelated. Cole’s lawyer,
Graham Shear told Press Gazette: ‘I think the warning to journalists from this is that
the internet is a powerful tool which means that you can’t be suggestive unless
absolutely certain of your facts. In this case they weren’t sure of their facts and their
facts were wrong.’ The newspaper agreed to settle for a large sum of damages
(Ponsford 2006: 1).
The production process for print and broadcast needs to be understood in order to fully under-
stand the ethical issues that arise and so good books about production will help. Print design and
editing practice is covered in my book, Chris Frost (2003) Designing for Newspaper and Magazines
(Routledge, Abingdon). Broadcast production is covered by a number of books but one of the
most up to date is Gary Hudson and Sarah Rowlands (2007) The Broadcast Journalism Handbook
(Pearson, Harlow).
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Chapter 10
TASTE AN D D E C E N CY;
HAR M AN D O F F E N C E
This chapter discusses the complex issue of harm and offence,

explaining:
• What causes offence

• How we can identify the moral issues involved in offence-giving
• The importance of audience when considering offence
Freedom of expression is one of the basic rights and one that allows us to say what
we like. However, there may be limits that should be placed in this freedom of
expression and I have already looked at some of them. The reputation of a person
may need to limit what we say; our desire to tell the truth may be another limitation.
After all, if we have freedom of expression, then we have the right to lie, but lying
will not lead to consumers trusting what journalists write and so it must be a limi-
tation.
One of the major limitations on freedom of speech is in the area of taste and
decency. Harm and offence, as it is also sometimes known, covers such issues as
nudity, sex, violence and bad language and is of particular concern to broadcasters,
but that does not mean that newspapers and magazines need not concern themselves
about this issue at all. The vast majority of complaints received by broadcasters con-
cerning these issues are about drama programmes or other entertainment, but the
news media still needs to take care about depictions of violence, whether from a war
zone or a road accident, and about nudity and bad language.
Images are probably the most concerning issue here. Pictures, whether for print
or broadcast, carry more potential for upsetting readers or viewers than is normally
the case for text. Many good pictures can be offensive. Several of the award-winning
pictures from the Vietnam War contained stark and disturbing images that many
will have found upsetting and offensive. A police chief’s street execution and a
naked young girl fleeing a napalm raid are images that were widely used at the time
and since, and stick firmly in my mind. They are offensive in the way that any
picture of violence and destruction is offensive, but they say more about the war and
what it meant than even the best of writers could have managed.
The whole topic of taste and decency is fraught with controversy. This is an
area of free expression which, in a free society, sends up warning signals quicker
than anything else. If an image or text is not used because it would offend a
section of the public, where does this principle end? If it is permissible for editors
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166 10 • Taste and decency; harm and offence
and producers to decide against using this image or that quote, why is it wrong
for governments to do the same thing? Judith Andre has some help here: ‘“No one
else has the right to decide what I can read” may work against governmental cen-
sorship; it will not work in areas where others are already and necessarily deciding
among competitors for limited space’ (1992: 78).
Anyone can set up their own publication and make their own decisions about
what is or is not published in it – in theory at least, although there are laws to cover
what may or may not be published in the area of decency and good taste in the UK.
The Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964, Race Relations Act 1976,
Broadcasting Acts 1990 and 1996, Public Order Act 1986 and blasphemous libel as
covered in the Law of Libel Amendment Act 1888 are just some of the laws which
limit what may be published or broadcast in an attempt to avoid causing offence
(see any good media law book for further details such as Frances Quinn’s Law for
Journalists, forthcoming). Sexually explicit pictures and text are frequently edited in
Britain because they are likely to offend. Pictures of death and violence are also
handled with care for fear of upsetting consumers. However, people can be just as
offended by the ideas some politicians put forward, so should these ideas also be
edited to protect people? If not, why should there be protection from emotional
offence but not intellectual offence?
Issues of taste and decency can be put under a number of headings: obscenity,
sedition, blasphemy, violence, bad language, sex, explicit pictorial or video images
(e.g. of death), bigotry, nudity. In all the above areas, decision-making is tough for
journalists, and often even more so for others in the arts and media. Is it right to use
an image or an idea that would cause offence to consumers or audience? The
Viewers and Listeners Association, a group led throughout the 1970s and 1980s by
the vociferous Mrs Mary Whitehouse, believed that no images, pictorial or textual,
that might offend their very traditional sensibilities should be used. They wanted to
see tougher laws brought into force to allow government to censor such images.
Some of their opponents take the ethical standpoint that all censorship is wrong and
that all people should have full access to all information. Many pro-censorship
moralists use religion as their ethic and the traditional view of family life inherent
in the ethos of many religions explains their viewpoint.
Inevitably, there is another group of people who see things differently. They take
a causalist approach and tend to be for or against censorship depending on whether
they believe that images of a sexually explicit or violent nature are likely to corrupt
and cause more crime or violence or the break-up of the family. They do not believe
that using such images is either right or wrong. Only the pragmatic effect should be
considered. According to Rajeev Dhavan and Christie Davies (1978), the intention
of the journalist is irrelevant to causalists. They are only concerned with whether
the article is likely to cause a bad effect. On the other hand, motivists are concerned
with the author’s intention because this could have a direct effect on whether the
image is presented for morally sound reasons.
While a motivist standpoint that there should be a law ruling out all images that
are likely to offend is debatable, the vast majority of people in Britain tend to believe
that there can be arguments made for using explicit images on occasion. This makes
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Taste and decency; harm and offence 167
it almost impossible to work out a code of conduct for the use of nudity, describing
or showing sexual practice, violence or death. Ofcom has drawn up a section of its
Broadcasting Code concerning harm and offence:
To ensure that generally accepted standards are applied to the content of television and radio
services so as to provide adequate protection for members of the public from the inclusion in such
services of harmful and/or offensive material. (http://www.ofcom.co.uk/ (accessed 20/6/06))
This is a very broad principle that requires its interpreters to understand what
generally accepted standards are. What might be acceptable on late-night television,
if handled sensitively, might not be considered at all acceptable in the early evening.
A pin-up nude picture of the sort carried by The Sun newspaper is considered by
many Britons to be acceptable in a family newspaper, but carrying the same picture
on a television commercial at 7.00 p.m. would provoke outrage – and not just from
the moralist minority. Furthermore, material that can be published without
comment in the West would spark storms of protest in a Muslim country. The
highly controversial Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, published in late 2005
and again in January 2006 are evidence of this, with riots in a number of Muslim
countries leading to the sacking of several Danish embassies and the deaths of a
number of people.
One way of measuring whether the consumer is happy is by using sales figures,
therefore many journalists start to equate the two. Higher sales figures show the con-
sumer is satisfied, therefore the decision to print, or not to print, was right both
ethically and financially. Under the circumstances, journalists will often cease consid-
ering such problems as ethical tests, and take each image, both pictorial and
descriptive, on its merits, weighing it against the possible reaction of the consumer and
any regulatory authority. Is the consumer going to feel better-informed because of this
image, offensive though it may be, or are they going to stop buying the newspaper? Is
the regulatory authority likely to take action against the newspaper, or can they be
persuaded that this story or image is part of an important truth-telling exercise? While
hardly anyone wants journalism to be simply a bland consideration of only those
things with which we feel comfortable, this pragmatic approach to the use of image
and text that might offend is fraught with difficulty. While mainstream media outlets
might well be taking sensible and balanced decisions, smaller circulation newspapers
and magazines may not, as the following Case study 10.1 illustrates.
So far I have tended to concentrate on the ‘sex and violence’ angle, but bigotry, in the
form of racism, sexism and religious intolerance, can also cause offence and needs to be
considered in the same way. It is important to remember that it is bigotry we should be
concerned about and not the presentation of views that are opposed to our own and on
which we may feel strongly. John Stuart Mill wrote about challenging true received
opinion:
Unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of
those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling for its
rational grounds. And not only this, but . . . the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of
being lost or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct. (Mill 1991: 59)
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Case study 10.1 Taste and decency

The Daily Sport and Sunday Sport newspapers constantly use photographs of naked or
semi-naked women in a way that many find offensive. Of course regular readers of
these papers do not, and indeed they buy them precisely because they include such
photographs. Therefore, if one considers providing such material to be their duty to
the consumer and proprietor, journalists working on the Sport and Sunday Sport are
ethically pure.
In contrast, compare the reaction to the women’s magazine Company which ran a
feature in 1995 about the pornography industry in the suburbs (Company, January
1995). This reasonably well-written, certainly unsalacious, article about suburban
housewives who acted in pornographic videos for fun and profit was illustrated with
explicit stills from the videos, with faces blanked out. It would have been possible to use
photographs which showed the set-up just as well without being explicit but presum-
ably the decision was taken to use pictures which would send the circulation soaring.
The reaction was mixed. Sales soared but the main retailers, newsagents John Menzies
and W.H. Smith, refused to stock the magazine that month.
What we have to recognise is that morality in any society is controlled by the whole
society and not just sections within it. The Sport is well outside the norm that is accept-
able to society as a whole and, while it is probably acceptable to allow some small
deviation from the norm to specialist reader groups, the Sport probably falls too far
outside this definition to be considered morally acceptable for its decision-making
about the type of stories and pictures it uses. However, it is not just this area of the pub-
lication market that has problems. During the Gulf War, The Observer (3 March 1991:
9) used a picture (taken by Kenneth Jarecke) of a dead soldier in the turret of his burnt-
out tank. As an image it was upsetting and offensive, but it said much about the horror
and brutality of war. There was much discussion before the picture was used. Only a
broadsheet decided that its audience could handle the complex mixed messages con-
tained in the image. No tabloid took the risk of upsetting a readership that was
considered by them to be intellectually unable to deal with the image. The tank com-
mander was Iraqi. It is unlikely that even the broadsheets would have risked using an
image as offensive as the charred corpse of a British officer. According to John Taylor,
no US paper used the picture either: ‘The newspaper pushed an accusatory photo-
graph of a burned man in its readers’ faces. Yet forcing viewers to look at such a horrific
picture, closing the gap between a distant action and its effect, is not enough to ensure
its moral meaning’ (Taylor 1999: 182).
The teenage girl magazine market also came under fire in 1996 when Peter Luff MP
proposed a private member’s Bill which attempted to limit what he saw as unnecessary
sexual material appearing in magazines aimed at teenagers and young girls. It led to the
setting up of the Teenage Magazine Arbitration Panel by the Periodical Publishers
Association. This has issued guidelines for magazines to follow. The TMAP has not
advertised itself widely and is seen by at least one researcher as ineffective: ‘I have yet
to meet a teacher or parent or journalist who has heard of it, even though it has now
been in existence for almost three years’ (McKay 1999: 23). If anything, its profile is
even lower now with the general public and it dealt with only one complaint in 2005.
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Taste and decency; harm and offence 169
The complication follows from the publication of things that cause offence if the
purpose was to offend. Religion is a particular case in point. Many Christians con-
demned the broadcasting by BBC 2 of Jerry Springer the Opera in 2005. The BBC
was contacted by at least 55,000 people, mainly to complain about swearing and
religious themes. Director General Mark Thompson, himself a practising Christian,
defended the decision to run the programme saying he believed there was nothing
blasphemous in the production and that it was being shown after the watershed
with ‘very, very clear’ warnings about strong language. Vice-president of the
national secular society, Terry Sanderson, said: ‘This organised attack is the latest
of a series of attempts by religious interests to control what we can see or say in
this country’ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4154071.stm
The BBC’s Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee decided by a majority of four to one not
to uphold complaints made about the decision to broadcast the show. Key to their decision was the
BBC’s commitment to freedom of expression linked to their ‘reasonable and comprehensive
attempts to minimize offence through appropriate scheduling, clear warnings and use of other
programmes prior to the broadcast to set the piece in context.’
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/03_march/30/springer.shtml (accessed
20/6/06))
The BBC faces the problem of taste and decency more than most. As a public
broadcaster it has to take the broadest possible view of its consumers and is there-
fore more likely to offend than almost any other medium. This is not because the
BBC is careless or unthinking, but because more people are likely to be watching
who will find they are offended by something. The BBC is required in the agreement
associated with its charter not to broadcast programmes which ‘include
anything which offends against good taste or decency or is likely to encourage or
incite to crime or lead to disorder, or be offensive to public feeling’
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/bbccharter/ agree_01.htm). The BBC says it seeks to
apply this requirement to all its broadcasting, whether to a domestic or international
audience.
Taste and decency raise sensitive and complex issues of programme policy for the BBC. We
broadcast to a much more fragmented society than in the past; one that has divided views on what
constitutes good taste. People of different ages and convictions may have sharply differing
expectations. Research suggests that while people have become more relaxed in recent years about
the portrayal of sex and sexual humour they remain concerned about the depiction of violence. The
use of language also divides the audience. Parents with children in the home are likely to be
particularly concerned about what appears on the air. This applies especially when families are
watching television before the Watershed. Many people expect to be given clear signals about what
to expect, especially when new series or formats appear. These views deserve respect. (BBC
Producers’ Guidelines 1996)
The BBC goes on to say that while they must remain in touch with audiences,
there are occasions when it is justified to run contrary to general expectations and
challenge assumptions: ‘The basic pillars of decency rest on telling the truth about
JOUR_C10.QXP 26/2/07 14:27 Page 170
the human experience, including its darker side, but we do not set out to demean or
brutalise through word or deed, or to celebrate cruelty’ (BBC Producers’ Guidelines
1996).
Newspaper codes in Britain don’t mention taste and decency. It is left entirely to
the discretion of the newspaper or magazine. The Press Council used to entertain
complaints about bad taste and found against the newspapers in question on several
occasions. Importantly, nearly all of the complaints appear to be cases where the
journalists involved had not thought through the full details and consequences of
the material they were writing.
Causing offence
A journalist should always be aware of the risk of causing offence, whether it is

through poor choice of language or sentence construction, or too detailed an
approach to the subject. Sometimes a journalist may be reporting on an issue that is
likely to cause offence. For instance, trying to alert readers to the horrors of war by
printing horrific, shocking photographs could cause offence and the journalist needs
to be sure the offence caused is not an end in itself.
What upsets consumers will, of course, vary from media outlet to media outlet.
What is acceptable in the Daily Telegraph would not be acceptable transmitted on
the BBC Six O’Clock News. The Telegraph’s readership is generally intelligent,
mature and well-informed. It would not be so easily shocked by detailed descrip-
tions of offensive material, provided it was dealt with unsensationally. The mixed
audience of all age groups watching the six o’clock news on television needs to be
handled more delicately. For example, in 1995 Rosemary West stood trial for tor-
turing and murdering a number of young women, including her own daughter. The
details were so shocking and horrific that the jury, court officers and many reporters
required counselling to get over it. The details of the case were not reported exten-
sively on the television news. Even the tabloids carried little detailed evidence of the
trial. However, the Daily Telegraph carried a considerable amount, certainly
enough to give readers a flavour of the true horrors: for example see issues for 11
October 1995; 31 October 1995; 22 November 1995. News editors had to spend a
lot of time deciding just how much detail to carry about the trial to give a true
picture of the horrors without offending consumers.
Television and radio tend to carry the least detail about stories that are likely
to offend because it is more difficult for people to control what is let into their
home through these media. National newspapers have to be purchased by the
consumer, but even so the tabloids tend to carry little detail because their audi-
ences are much wider and therefore more open to being offended. The
broadsheets take a different attitude, but even they rarely put stories such as the
West trial on the front page. If they do, it is to use a sanitised version pointing to
a fuller report inside. Free newspapers have a similar responsibility to television’s,
since they are delivered to the home without the reader having any choice in the
matter.
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Causing offence 171
Case study 10.2 The publication of offensive material

A case that was taken to the Press Council in 1984 illustrates the point perfectly. The
East Grinstead Observer carried a front-page report of a court case about a man who had
indecently assaulted his seven-year-old step-daughter. A complaint was lodged that the
paper had included unnecessarily explicit detail about the case, rendering it offensive.
The complainant was particularly upset as the newspaper was a free paper delivered
‘unrequested, through his door’. The Press Council agreed that the report was offen-
sive and upheld the complaint: ‘In the Council’s view, it is immaterial in this case
whether the report appeared in a free or in a paid for newspaper. The Council agrees
that the report published prominently as the paper’s front page lead included unneces-
sarily explicit detail of an indecent assault. The publication was particularly offensive
as the victim of the assault was a seven-year-old child’ (Press Council 1984: 167) (see
Appendix 1, clause 7).
In another case, a complaint was brought against the Caterham Comet Leader which
was also upheld. Details of the condition of a man’s body found in a wood, reported in
the Caterham Comet Leader, were distasteful and distressing. The account published
would have been tasteless and unnecessarily offensive in any type of newspaper but was
particularly so when published in a free newspaper. In such circumstances, an even
greater degree of care and discretion than usual is required of an editor when deciding
whether to publish material which may be offensive. Publication in this case was an
error of judgement. The Press Council welcomed the editor-in-chief ’s recognition of
this, his letter of unreserved apology to the complainant, and his decision later to
publish an apology for the report (Press Council 1990: 196).
No one has the right to be protected from offence, because what might offend
one person would not offend another. The young male reader of Bizarre, a maga-
zine specialising in presenting stories and pictures designed to offend, is not going
to be offended by the same material as his grandmother, but that is not to suggest
that there is nothing that would offend him. If there is no human right not to be
offended and there is a human right to freedom of expression, it would seem that
the right to freedom of expression will allow offensive material to be published
every time. However, things are not that simple. Some material that offends
breaches or potentially breaches other rights. Material designed to incite violence or
hatred could be prevented on the grounds that it would interfere with someone’s
right to life and to security. The Race Hatred laws are drawn up on this basis and
it is possible to argue that obscenity laws work by preventing the corruption of some
sections of society to the detriment of their or others’ lives and liberty. Cohen-
Almagor poses what he calls the ‘offence to sensibilities’ argument. This is when ‘the
content or manner of expression is designed to cause severe psychological offense
against a target group, and the objective circumstances make that group inescapably
exposed to that offense’. In those circumstances, he says, freedom of expression
should be restricted (Cohen-Almagor 2006: 107). Generally, that sort of circum-
stance may well be found in the media which could well ‘inescapably’ expose a
sub-group to that offence. There can certainly be an argument that where offence is
JOUR_C10.QXP 26/2/07 14:27 Page 172
indulged in by a powerful body such as a national newspaper, its freedom of

expression should be more limited because the people offended will not be in a pos-
ition to answer back in a true debate and so will be inescapably exposed to harm.
One of the reasons that many campaigners have attacked the coverage of asylum
seekers by some newspapers is for exactly this reason: the offence caused (com-
pounded often by inaccurate reporting) was disproportionate and, in any case,
inescapably exposed refugees, whatever their status, to potential harm in terms of
discrimination, contempt and violence. Had the refugees been a powerful group in
society, then the offence might not have been harmful and the full freedom of
expression could have been used. Any newspaper, for instance, can say what it likes
about members of any of the political parties; these people are members of a group
in society that has sufficient power to ensure a more balanced debate and while they
might well be offended, they are not inescapably exposed to harm and have plenty
of options concerning their response.
In the same way, according to Cohen-Almagor, ‘it is one thing to allow the pub-
lication of The Satanic Verses and quite another to grant Salman Rushdie
permission to promote his book in the religious Pakistani neighbourhood in
Bradford, northern England, should he wish to do’ (2006: 116). He believes the
offence caused by this book to this neighbourhood is so great as to over-ride
Rushdie’s right to freedom of speech.
So dealing with harm and offence, whether in newspapers or broadcast, involves
us in looking at audience and consequence. This makes it a different type of moral
problem to most of those we face. Most code of conduct issues are motive decisions.
Journalists have a moral duty to follow a certain path as identified in the code clause
and if they do this, then they will have behaved morally. But in taste and decency,
we cannot draw up a universal law that guides us to the right course. We must look
at a number of issues.
Ofcom identifies ‘offensive language, violence, sex, sexual violence, humiliation,
distress, violation of human dignity, discriminatory treatment or language (for
example on the grounds of age, disability, gender, race, religion, beliefs and sexual
orientation)’ as being potentially offensive and that broadcasters must ensure such
material is justified by the context. Appropriate information should also be broad-
cast where it would assist in avoiding or minimising offence. The context would be
affected by:
• the editorial content of the programme, programmes or series;
• the service on which the material is broadcast;
• the time of broadcast;
• what other programmes are scheduled before and after the programme or programmes
concerned;
• the degree of harm or offence likely to be caused by the inclusion of any particular sort of
material in programmes generally or programmes of a particular description;
• the likely size and composition of the potential audience and likely expectations of the audience;
• the extent to which the nature of the content can be brought to the attention of the potential
audience for example by giving information; and
JOUR_C10.QXP 26/2/07 14:27 Page 173
• the effect of the material on viewers or listeners who may come across it unawares.
(www.ofcom.co.uk (accessed 20/6/06))
Most of these directly refer to the audience and the degree of inescapable offence.
In the Jerry Springer the Opera example given earlier, the programme was put out
late, on BBC 2 (a more specialist channel), had plenty of warnings and was sur-
rounded by contextualising programmes. The likely audience was seen as adult,
mature, educated, inquisitive and capable of forming their own judgements.
Therefore the risk of inescapable harm or offence was small and so the imperative
of freedom of speech won out, as the consequences of broadcasting should have
meant that an educated audience had the intellectual freedom to see the play for
themselves and make up their own minds about its merits or demerits, whilst those
who knew they would be offended or were too young to make such a decision
received sufficient information to ensure they did not watch or that their parents
could prevent them watching.
News reports require more difficult judgements. These are not able to be flagged
so obviously, although occasionally news reports of disasters, famines and the like
are preceded by clear information to allow those who may be offended to switch off
or over. Bulletins are also transmitted at different times, so what may well be accept-
able for broadcast on Newsnight, may be unacceptable in the Six O’Clock News,
when children might be watching. Equally, the Daily Telegraph with its older, more
educated audience can take a more adult view of the news than most of the tabloids.
While news is fast changing and the potential for offence always there, a journalist
who is aware of this and the target audience, and their ability to ensure it can escape
harm by turning off, or not reading following a suitable warning, will be able to deal
fairly with the consumer.
Helpful texts covering the issue of harm and offence from different sources include Raphael
Cohen-Almagor (2006) The Scope of Tolerance: Studies on the Costs of Free Expression and the
Freedom of the Press (Routledge, London) which looks in depth at the concept of judging offence
by the ability of those likely to be offended to minimise harm.
John Taylor (1999) Body Horror (Manchester University Press, Manchester) concentrates par-
ticularly on pictures and film in the news and the issues of war and violence.
One of the leading researchers into harm and offence in broadcasting is Andrea Millwood
Hargrave, who as head of research for the Broadcasting Standards Commission did a lot of
research into the issues of harm and offence and bad language on TV. Her report: Andrea
Millwood Hargrave (1991) Taste and Decency in Broadcasting (BSC, London) is not easy to get
hold of, but should be in most university libraries.
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Chapter 11
P R O F E S S I O NAL P RACTI C E
This chapter concentrates on professional issues of a general

nature not covered in other chapters, in particular:
• The importance of sensitivity

• Issues involved in interviewing
• Issues involved in dealings with sources and contacts
There are some basic patterns of working that underpin ethical journalism. They are
not about the big issues, such as invasion of privacy, or truth, but more about fair
professional practice. Good journalists will be aware of these aspects of their work
and will understand the implications of how they deal with them.
Dealing with people
Much of a journalist’s life is spent dealing with people, either extracting research
information from them in order to back up a story or interviewing them to provide
credible witnesses and sources for the story.
Sensitivity
A journalist needs to be sensitive both when gathering stories and when writing
them up for publication and the journalist who is anxious to avoid unwitting
offence will generally perform better as a journalist than one who does not. Dealing
sensitively with those who have been bereaved, voted out of office, sacked or made
bankrupt is an important professional skill and therefore one that a good journalist
has a moral duty to acquire. However, a journalist will sometimes use the appear-
ance of false sensitivity as a technique to ingratiate him or herself in a way that is
itself dishonest and therefore morally dubious.
Meeting people
Most journalists work hard at being personable. They discover early on that being
liked is an important part of gaining people’s trust and getting them to talk openly.
Journalists in television dramas are often portrayed as blatantly nasty, untrust-
worthy characters. This is far from reality. Who would talk to such a person? Even
the rottenest journalists, provided they have any professional ability at all, can
JOUR_C11.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 175
produce a veneer of friendliness, and many of the best have considerable charm. It
is usually their interest in people that has drawn them to this career in the first place.
The gap between fact and fiction works in the journalist’s favour here. Those who
do not deal often with the media expect a journalist to be sly and seedy and are
pleasantly surprised by the personable character they meet and find it difficult not
to say more than they intend. Journalists are trained to be friendly, to put people at
their ease – it is an important professional skill.
Interviews
Interviews always require a professional approach. As stated earlier, a journalist has
a loyalty to contacts and must treat them fairly. The only exceptions to this that
might arise are when subterfuge or deception are the only way of getting a story
which is in the public interest. The Press Council dealt with such a case in the early
1980s (Press Council 1984: 188). ‘A reporter was justified in posing as a Nazi sym-
pathiser to expose the activities of a member of an extremist organisation’, it
decided after a complaint was made that a reporter had obtained an interview by
subterfuge for a News of the World story headed ‘Teacher leads double life as nasty
Nazi’. The reporter said he called at the home of the subject of the article ‘posing as
a fellow Nazi, and asked if he (the complainant) could provide contacts for a trip to
Germany’. He told the Press Council that he had made the visit because he had
received a report that the complainant had taken over as international liaison officer
of the League of St George.
In another case in the same year, the Press Council decided that subterfuge was
not justified. The Daily Mail ran a feature about the Teachers for Peace organisation
and other peace campaigners calling it the ‘School’s most sinister lesson’. Whilst the
Press Council supported the Daily Mail’s right to criticise the teaching of peace
studies in schools, it did not support its reporter’s use of subterfuge:
Its reporter wrote that he posed as a left-wing English teacher in order to obtain information from
the Teachers for Peace organisation. The Council has said consistently that journalists’ use of
subterfuge can only be justified in pursuit of information which ought to be published in the public
interest and only when there is no other reasonably practicable method of obtaining or confirming
information. The council is not satisfied that there was no other reasonably practicable method of
obtaining such information about Teachers for Peace as the Daily Mail got in this case. (Press
Council 1984: 208)
In a majority of cases a journalist should be both fair and honest with intervie-
wees. Most people are not used to being interviewed whereas most journalists are
skilled and experienced at interviewing. There are, however, some people, poli-
ticians for instance, who are experienced at being interviewed and have a few tricks
of their own. An inexperienced, local reporter interviewing a Cabinet minister could
use every trick he or she had learned without being able to take unfair advantage of
the politician. However, since a local paper is likely to support the status quo, there
probably wouldn’t be much point in hammering the minister anyway – the paper
would be seeking an interview with a celebrity visitor rather than the grilling of a
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176 1 1 • Professional practice
Cabinet minister. Only if there were a local campaign under way about a major
issue would a local reporter normally take a minister to task, and then most street-
wise politicians steer well clear of such situations until the campaign is over. For
instance, a town that is reeling from the closure of a defence establishment with the
loss of hundreds of jobs is unlikely to receive a visit from any Cabinet minister,
never mind the ministers for Defence or Employment, for some time after the
announcement.
Behaving fairly to interviewees requires journalists to make it clear from the start
who they are, who they represent and their reasons for quizzing the interviewees.
Good professional practice will mean putting interviewees at their ease, talking
them through the situation and making it clear that notes or a tape recording will
be taken and seeking their approval for this. For a broadcast interview this is a two-
stage process. First, talking through the issue with the interviewee, collecting the
facts and deciding on what line to take for the recorded interview and preparing the
interviewee. The second stage is recording the interview. Even audio-taping an inter-
view can be an ordeal for the inexperienced, but a television interview with a camera
operator, sound technician and interviewer can be a real trial. Good professionals
will do all they can to put interviewees at their ease and thus allow them to put their
case in the way they want.
One of the huge advantages that broadcasting has as a news medium is the
ability not just to transmit people’s words, but also their demeanour and, to a
certain extent, their personality. It is a matter of professional morality to ensure
that the interviewees are given the opportunity to present themselves in an accu-
rate light. This does not mean that the reporter needs to alter the image in an
attempt to improve it. If, for instance, the interview is with a farmer about farming
issues, then interviewing the farmer in his working clothes out in the field or farm-
yard would be accurate and give the viewer a rounder picture. But to interview the
same man in the same position just after he has been elected president of the area
Rotary Club would be to give a different impression and it would be important to
give him the opportunity to change clothes and setting if he wishes. Only by taking
care over these matters can a journalist be sure that he or she is being as truthful
as possible with the audience. For a newspaper journalist, this is not so important
as the interviewee is not seen. But if pictures are taken, then the same thing would
apply.
It can be reasonably assumed, provided all this is done, that the interviewees are
happy to see their names and what they say in print or broadcast. There is no need
to confirm that they are prepared to go ‘on the record’ (see below). Provided a
reporter has correctly identified him or herself and the reason for the interview, it
can be assumed that the interviewees realise that they could end up in the news-
paper. Occasionally, however, a reporter may be aware that there are good reasons
why interviewees might wish to remain anonymous. Perhaps they are talking about
drug dealers setting up in their neighbourhood or perhaps they have committed a
crime themselves. In these circumstances, in order to be fair to the interviewees, the
journalist should specifically check that the interviewees are happy to have their
names used in any published piece.
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Sometimes interviews are only given under certain terms and conditions. These
place the journalists under a moral obligation to use the information they have
gathered only in the way the interviewee has stipulated.
On the record
This means that the interview is open and that anything said can be used with the
name of the person who said it. It does not mean that quotes can be adjusted to suit
the journalist, or that they can be made up. It does mean that things said can be used
verbatim or edited to suit the length and style of an article. A journalist is not
obliged to use full utterances, but the chosen extracts should be a fair representation
of what was said and what was meant and presented in the order that it was said.
Often in an interview, people are nervous and their tongues play tricks on them that
their brains did not mean. If an interviewee, for instance a politician, were to say
something that seemed to support an opposite viewpoint, then it is important that
the journalist should check that that is what he or she really meant in order to play
fair with the interviewee and be honest with the consumers. It would also be wrong
to mislead the interviewee about the journalistic status of the interviewer unless
there were some overriding reason of public concern involved. A journalist keeping
his or her identity secret in an interview can rarely be justified.
Off the record

Off the record is an increasingly popular way for those in official or semi-official pos-
itions to communicate with the media. Many public servants in such areas as health,
education or social services are concerned about developments in their fields and
wish to speak out. But they may be afraid to do so because they fear losing their jobs,
or making things difficult for themselves. By speaking off the record they can alert
reporters to a situation without specific quotes being used or without them being
named. Reporters do not have to agree to an off-the-record interview. Often the
information is already in the public domain and reporters are only after confirma-
tion and comment. However, sometimes the information cannot be obtained from
another source. In such cases journalists should only agree to an off-the-record inter-
view if they are confident they can keep to their side of the bargain, that is, promise
not to reveal the interviewee’s name in print or a broadcast. Of course, if reporters
say no to off-the-record interviews, then it is up to the interviewees whether they give
any further information, and up to the reporters whether they continue to seek infor-
mation from the interviewees. Sometimes interviewees will say at the end of an
ordinary interview: ‘Oh, that was off the record of course.’ Clearly it is not right for
interviewees to introduce different terms to the way the interviews are being handled
after the interviews have taken place and the journalists can be morally justified in
saying: ‘Tough, I’m using it.’ However, since this would mean upsetting contacts, the
journalists may well need to take a more sanguine view and pick up the interviewees’
requests or at least negotiate a compromise. Morally, the reporters are not bound by
the late request. Practically of course, they may find it politic to oblige.
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Sometimes, though, journalists interview people who are unused to dealing with
the media and may not fully understand the difference between on and off the
record. This needs to be explained to the contact so that if it is clear they are
intending that their comments be off-the-record, then that is what will happen. The
PCC has made it clear that it will accept complaints from the public about breaching
off-the-record under clause 15 or under the general spirit of the code.
Non-attributable
This is slightly different to off-the-record statements and is used a lot by politicians
and royalty. It leads to such tags as: ‘A Whitehall spokesman said . . .’, ‘A close
friend of the princess said . . .’, ‘An influential member of the Party said . . .’. What
the interviewees said can be used in full, but their names must be kept secret.
In the House of Commons lobby, this method allows politicians to talk to jour-
nalists without risking their political careers. They can leak information without it
necessarily being blamed on them. The main lobby is the twice-daily briefing by the
Prime Minister’s Office at 10 Downing Street, although other departments and min-
isters also use the lobby on occasion. Only accredited journalists who are prepared
to accept the tight conditions laid down by the Downing Street Press Office are
allowed to attend these briefings. The system is controversial and has its detractors,
who claim that journalists taking part become part of the system they should be crit-
icising. Supporters say it allows them access to information and opinion from
important sources they would otherwise be denied. The government finds these
lobby briefings useful as it allows ministers to ‘fly flags’. This means the minister can
suggest that government intends to do something without the source of the infor-
mation being known. The politicians can then gauge reactions to the idea before
deciding whether to make the plan public or to deny it altogether. The lobby can
also be used to attack politicians on both sides of the House. Sir Richard Wilson,
the then Cabinet Secretary, took the unusual step in June 1998 of revealing that he
had warned Tony Blair’s Press Secretary, Alistair Campbell, to tone down political
activity in the lead up to the local elections that year in order to prevent civil ser-
vants being dragged into a slanging match with the opposition.
Sir Richard described Mr Campbell as a ‘free bird’ who was able to present Government policy in a
party political context, unlike civil servants who are constrained by the traditional Whitehall code
of impartiality.
Having monitored the notes of twice-daily lobby briefings for parliamentary journalists, he
believed none of the material suggested that Mr Campbell ‘comes anywhere near attacking the
opposition’. (Daily Telegraph, 17 June 1998: 1)
The lobby system has at various times been condemned by journalists and poli-
ticians. It can lead to a lack of responsibility on the part of politicians. A politician
can leak a story, gauge the reaction and then confirm or deny the story’s truth later.
This is a useful tool for governments, particularly those with slim majorities. It is
also useful to unscrupulous journalists who can provide quotes without having to
justify them and without anyone being able to complain of being misquoted. At its
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worst it allows journalists to take a story and use it uncritically because it is diffi-
cult to follow through a story that is not attributed to a source. Such stories can be
difficult to attack or defend, prove or disprove. Several attempts have been made
over the years to end the lobby system. The Independent refused to join when it was
first launched but had to review its position later. Although most people agree that
the lobby system is far from ideal, no one has yet come up with an alternative which
is able to offer all the benefits to both sides afforded by the present system.
Quotes
The quotes the journalist uses to support a story are the only true record of an inter-
view or report. Watched on television or listened to on the radio, the consumer can
be confident that what is heard (supported by voice intonation and facial expression
in the case of television) gives them accurate information. A newspaper or magazine
is at a disadvantage (in the confidence stakes) because it cannot show, in the same
way, that its reporting of the person’s words is accurate. For this reason, as well as
all the moral arguments about truth-telling, it is important that quotes are dealt
with scrupulously. This does not mean that the whole of a twenty-minute interview
must be transcribed (although it is a technique used occasionally in magazines);
almost everyone benefits from a little editing. What is important is that quotes are
used accurately, appropriately and in correct chronological order. Mixing and
matching what someone has said to put words in a different order, or to cut quali-
fying phrases away from the main sentence, is to cheat the interviewee. For instance,
a union leader who says ‘I will have to consult the membership but I believe we will
be on strike from next week’ is entitled to be angry if he is quoted as saying ‘We will
be on strike from next week’.
Editing and chronological order are as important as accurate reporting.
However, that does not mean that we should not improve people’s grammar. What
is said in a heated and emotionally-charged situation might sound fine but would
look terrible in print. For example, ‘The copper just stood there and didn’t do
nothing to save him’ is just the kind of phrase a witness might use, but it could be
transcribed to ‘The copper just stood there and didn’t do anything to save him’.
Exchanging the ‘nothing’ for ‘anything’ corrects a common grammatical mistake
which is barely noticed in conversation but in print makes the speaker seem ill-
educated. Changing the ‘copper’ would, I think, be taking it too far. This word is
widely used, so there is no problem about comprehension, yet its choice by the
witness says something about the witness’s views of the police, and his or her pos-
ition in society. It helps us gain a better picture of what is going on. A reason for
using direct quotations from witnesses is that an accurate report often says much
more than they had intended to tell us. Their choice of language and phrasing can
help us decide how much we believe them.
Journalists often use the trick of saying: ‘Well, would you say that . . .’ and then,
if the interviewee agrees with what they have said, go on to use it as an original
quote. Providing that journalists are aware that putting the interviewees’ views into
their own words sacrifices accuracy for a sharper soundbite, then it may be a fair
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exchange. It is a judgement only journalists who are faced with an inarticulate

witness can make.
Research and cuttings

The pressures on journalists to be more efficient and cut costs has led to an increase
in the use of telephone interviews, instead of talking face to face, and the more
extensive use of press-cuttings libraries for research. Although these methods can be
useful to overworked journalists working to tight deadlines, the PCC felt it
necessary to include a warning about them in its March 1992 report. In relation to
cuttings it said:
Cuttings are an essential part of newspaper research but too many journalists now seem to act in
the belief that to copy from 10 old stories is better than to write a new one with confirmation by
proper fresh enquiry. In one instance . . . a magazine admitted that because it had been unable to
contact a woman who had been attacked by her husband some months previously, it wrote up the
story on the basis of newspaper reports, inventing dialogue to put the story into the magazine’s
style. The result was an article that contained serious inaccuracies and was to a degree fictitious.
(PCC 1992: 2)
In relation to telephone interviews it warned:

In one article the reporter said of the interviewee: ‘Watching her, sitting up in bed . . .’ when in fact
the reporter had never visited the house. This led the reader to understand that the reporter had
been invited into the person’s house when in fact what really happened was that a short and
somewhat reluctant telephone interview had been given. (PCC 1992: 3)
The PCC editorial went on to say that such practices could give rise to complaints
under clause 1 of the Code that requires newspapers not to publish inaccurate or
misleading material.
Use of language
Journalists have a professional and moral duty to ensure they use language precisely
and carefully. It is very easy to offend people or distort the truth by the poor use of
language. The wrong word or an ill-chosen phrase can put a slant on something that
might not be intended. Journalists can never use the excuse that they did not mean
what was written; their tools are words and they must ensure they use them well.
There are numerous examples of the use of offensive language in the Press Council’s
annals. The Press Council, for instance, made it a rule that the word ‘poof’ was
offensive and should not be used (Press Council 1990: 189). In another judgment
they ruled that the word ‘chinky’, as a reference to people of Chinese origin, was
offensive and should not be used in newspapers (Press Council 1990: 193). The then
editor of the Star (which had used the word in a headline), Brian Hitchin, argued
that most people thought the headline was very funny. However, the Press Council
upheld the complaint: ‘The Daily Star’s headline was superficially an amusing play
on words and rhyme but its use of the derogatory term “chinky” was offensive and
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Case study 11.1 Journalistic methods and bad practice

Many of the issues discussed above are raised in the 1989 annual report of the Press
Council which contains several examples of bad practice. One case concerned the Daily
Mail. In trying to find information about a reported murder, journalists resorted to
telephoning houses near the village murder site at random. Since the call to the com-
plainant came at 1.40 a.m., he was understandably upset, particularly as there was no
reason to suppose he knew any more about it than anyone else. The Press Council adju-
dication said: ‘There are rare occasions when a newspaper may be justified in
disturbing someone by telephone in the early hours with a request for comment or
information. This was not one of them. Such conduct is tolerable when a story is
important and urgent, and when the person telephoned is known to be directly con-
nected with the story being covered or, say, an official spokesman. There is no such
justification in this case’ (Press Council 1989: 205). In this instance the paper apolo-
gised to the complainant.
In another case, a former borough councillor, who had written to a paper, found his
letter used as though it were an interview. No contact had been made with the com-
plainant, although the Milton Keynes Citizen said it had tried. The Press Council
agreed that it was wrong to use statements from the letter without further reference to
the writer, giving the misleading impression that he had been interviewed. If the report
had made it clear the comments were made in a letter, the readers would not have been
misled and there would have been no breach of ethics (Press Council 1989: 204).
A more recent case of the misuse of an interview occurred in 1998 when the Sun
newspaper went one step further in misleading the reader. In January 1998, it pub-
lished a piece about a mother who gave birth at the age of sixty and described it as
written by Lord Winston, the eminent Professor of Fertility Studies (The Sun, 23
January 1998). The following week the paper published an apology in which it admitted
that a reporter had spoken to Lord Winston but the article was not written by him (The
Sun, 29 January 1998: 2). To attribute the article to Lord Winston was clearly unpro-
fessional and highly unethical.
is happily outmoded. The temptation to use it should have been resisted’ (Press
Council 1990: 193).
Many words of this sort are offensive to different groups in society and the good
journalist needs to be aware of this. To use such words in a deliberate attempt to
offend or be provocative is one thing, but to use such a word without thought and
be offensive by accident is unprofessional. There are a wide range of words and
phrases that require care. Racist and sexist language, religious niceties, slang, bad
language, sexual and anatomical words should all be thought about before use (see
Appendices 1 and 2). How would readers feel about the use of such language? It
may be fine to use bad language in a magazine aimed at a readership that expects it
(for example, a magazine aimed at young men, such as Loaded) but probably not
in a local newspaper where readers do not expect to read such language. The BBC
issued new guidelines to employees when separate legislatures were introduced for
Scotland and Wales. It was concerned with the detail of language surrounding
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nationhood and its likelihood to cause offence. It warned: ‘Words like “nation”,
“country” and “capital” can be interpreted differently by different audiences. . . . It
is better that programmes which are broadcast throughout the United Kingdom talk
about things happening “across the United Kingdom” or “UK-wide” when that is
what they mean’ (BBC 1999: 5). The guidelines go on to warn against using England
and Britain interchangeably.
Pronunciation is as important as language use for broadcasters and can cause
offence just as easily. It is important to check you have the right pronunciation.
Making promises
A journalist should be aware that making a promise binds him or her to a course of
action. However, the temptation is often there to agree to do something in order to
make life easier. For instance, an interviewee will often ask to be sent a copy of the
newspaper in which the interview appears, and the easy course is to agree. However,
keeping a check on when a particular article appears and sending it on can be more
irksome than it sounds and so a journalist would be well advised to refuse to
promise to send a paper.
Vetting copy
Reporters are sometimes asked by interviewees to provide them with a copy of the
report for checking.
If a reporter agrees to telephone someone and read back the copy, or put a pho-
tocopy in the post, that reporter has abrogated editing responsibility to the
interviewee. No matter how firmly the journalist tells the interviewee that he or she
cannot change a word, inevitably there will be words that the interviewee insists
should be changed – the interviewee may claim they are wrong or give a bad
impression. The journalist may say that the piece was only offered for checking, but
can hardly complain when alterations are offered. In any case, checking is the jour-
nalist’s job and he or she cannot pretend that a piece is accurate and fair if the piece
is to be shown to one or more of the people interviewed before publication. Not to
take up the changes asked for would be to invite legitimate criticism. In a Press
Council case, the Daily Mail had a complaint upheld against it for failing to honour
an undertaking. ‘As a result of the failure to honour the undertaking the article
included items of a highly personal nature which the complainant found offensive,
although the intention of the article was to be sympathetic’ (Press Council 1978:
114). The Press Council was here condemning the failure to honour a promise, but
it was a promise that should never have been made. Showing the copy to an inter-
viewee is a tacit admission that the piece is public relations and not journalism. That
does not mean, however, that it might not be appropriate to read back quotes to an
interviewee, rather than the whole story. To confirm with a contact that they did
say what the journalist is claiming they said is not the same as copy approval.
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Covering stories
Promises are often sought about the use of stories. Court cases are a good example
where journalists are often approached by people accused of committing a crime, or
their relatives, and asked to keep a certain story quiet. However, journalists’ loyalty
is not to the accused but to the editor, the reader and society in general. Therefore,
any approach made to a journalist about a story should be referred to the editor and
it should be the editor’s decision whether copy is used or not. This is doubly true if
a bribe is offered, threats are made or the journalist is somehow personally involved.
To allow these considerations to influence whether or not to submit a story would
be highly unprofessional. Some editors are so concerned about undue pressure being
brought to bear that they will automatically use such a story even if they wouldn’t
normally have bothered. Because this is the case, many experienced reporters will
advise distressed relatives not to contemplate suppression; that they should contact
the editor if they feel they must but that their chances of non-publication would be
much better by leaving the matter to the lottery of space and news values. I see
nothing wrong with journalists using their knowledge and experience of the system
to advise those in distress, provided the reporters then go on to write up the story
as though nothing had happened and file it in the normal way. Failing to file the
copy would be unethical, unprofessional and could well be a disciplinary offence if
discovered.
Embargoes
Organisations sometimes place restrictions on the publication of their press releases.
For instance, government departments often release lengthy documents to the media
before the official publication date to give them a chance to read and digest the con-
tents. In return, journalists are expected not to use the material until the date given
on the embargo. For instance, the New Year’s Honours List is published at the start
of the new year, but the list is issued to the media around 20 December. This allows
journalists to contact the people on the list for interviews and pictures before the
Christmas holiday break – a time when many of the award recipients will be
unavailable and when many journalists are also on holiday, leaving skeleton news-
rooms to do the work. The embargo lets the newsrooms do the work when both the
reporters and recipients of the award are available.
Neither the PCC (which embargoes its own quarterly reports) nor the NUJ has
specific clauses on embargoes but both have clauses specifying that journalists have
a duty to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards. It is unlikely that
an embargo complaint would be considered by the PCC but one was dealt with by
the Press Council in 1989 when the Gateshead Post and The Times (24 April 1989)
broke an embargo by publishing the news that a local firm had won the Queen’s
Award to Industry. The company told the Press Council that it had not been allowed
to tell its workforce of the award and the publication of information in a press
release a day early was not good for worker morale. The company had intended to
break the good news to its workers on the day agreed. The newspapers said that the
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embargo was inadvertently missed, but the managing director of the company said
he did not believe that because it was printed plainly at the start and end of the press
release. The Press Councial upheld the complaint (Press Council 1989: 214).
All press releases should be checked for embargoes and any decision to breach
them should be considered very seriously. A paper or broadcast station that contin-
ually ignores embargoes risks not receiving press releases in advance. Since this
facility is often to the advantage of the media, common sense suggests that embar-
goes should be adhered to unless there are good reasons not to, such as an embargo
being used to prevent publication of information already widely known.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism involves passing off someone else’s writing as your own. The most
obvious use of plagiarism is when another media outlet has a story that a journalist
wants to use. It is very tempting – bearing in mind the pressures of time journalists
are often under to meet copy deadlines – to use that story, perhaps rewriting it in
order not to breach copyright and to avoid detection. However, the problems with
this are twofold:
1. Can it be morally right to take someone else’s work and pass it off as your
own, thus depriving the original journalist of fees that are rightfully his or hers?
2. What if the original story is wrong? A journalist who copies a story risks
repeating any error contained within it. Furthermore, he or she may bow to the
temptation to firm up elements left deliberately vague in the original, thus
increasing the number of errors. Often sub-editors who have re-written a
reporter’s copy to make it ‘brighter’ have been forced to return to something
closer to the original because the copy says more than the reporter is able to
support and is straying into the area of defamation or sensationalism.
This is not to say that we should not use other media to alert us to stories. Sometimes
a newspaper will carry a story that is of such importance that rivals are duty-bound to
follow it up. Because of this, national tabloids will often hold a superb story until after
the first edition has been printed and then publish the story in the second edition when
the time available for the rivals to pick up the story is greatly reduced. All news desks
use television and radio news to alert them to a breaking story. Listening to local radio
stations can alert local newspaper journalists to any serious accident or fire in plenty of
time for them to ring the appropriate service, get the details and go out and get the
story. The television and radio can be extremely useful in providing us with eye-witness
information on events such as royal weddings and sporting occasions.
Personal lives
Many people believe that journalists should be impartial (see Chapter 3). At its most
extreme, this view proposes that journalists should not have any personal political
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Guidelines 185
views, that they should be aloof from society and act as pure observers. However,
journalists do need to be concerned about the society on which they are reporting
and commenting. If they are not concerned about it, not involved in it, then they
will probably be very poor journalists. Journalism is about people and journalists
should be gregarious, and interested in the people and the issues on which they are
reporting. This means that many reporters have political ideals and are politically
active (though many have also seen far too many politicians to be anything other
than cynical about politicians and politics). Furthermore, some journalists have
other outside interests and are involved in various clubs and societies, although
others find their hours of work militate against joining such groups. Because of this,
journalists, more than most professional groups, enjoy each other’s company.
In order to keep their personal and social lives clear of professional conflicts of
interest, it is important that a journalist should inform the news desk if any story on
which he or she is working is likely to produce such a conflict. Having said that,
most journalists should be professional enough to avoid the obvious traps. If, for
instance, a Labour-supporting journalist cannot interview a Conservative MP and
produce a fair and balanced piece, then maybe that journalist should reconsider his
or her career. That is not to say that the piece would be necessarily completely
impartial. There are bound to be issues on which the Conservative record was not
perfect and these should be picked up by any journalist, no matter what his or her
political views. Indeed, it is often more difficult for journalists to be certain they
have left their personal views on hold if they are supporters of the person being
interviewed, rather than generally disagreeing with the interviewee. There is the con-
stant fear that one is being too soft, not going for the main issue.
Some personal links are, however, more difficult to deal with. For example, it
would not be easy for a journalist to investigate a company whose environmental
record is poor if his or her partner worked for the company. Furthermore, if the
partner’s job was potentially at risk, the investigation might well become too
stressful. In a case like this the journalist should tell the news editor the problem and
the news editor should then assign another reporter to the job.
Guidelines
The PCC issues guidelines on topical issues from time to time as did the Press
Council before it. Its reports on the coverage of major events such as the Strangeways
riot (PC Booklet No. 8, January 1991) drew the media’s attention to important
lessons. It is a shame that the PCC does not carry out such full-scale enquiries.
The PCC guidelines cover issues such as:
Editorial cooperation: this concerns editor’s obligation to deal with complaints

promptly and make complainants aware of the existence of the PCC.
Lottery guidance note: This advises editors on how to handle lottery winners who
have opted for anonymity.
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Data Protection Act, journalism and the PCC Code: This gives guidance on the Data
Protection Act and its application to journalism.
On the reporting of people accused of crime: This gives guidance on the area of pre-
sumption of innocence as well as advice on dealing with the relatives of those
involved in criminal activity.
Refugees and asylum seekers: Advises on the terminology and approach to be taken
to writing about asylum seekers and immigration.
The judiciary and harassment: This reminds editors that convention does not allow
judges to comment about cases and that an approach for comment could be con-
sidered harassment.
Financial journalism best practice note 2005: This advises on best practice with
regard to financial journalism and a journalist’s duty not to benefit from prior
knowledge.
On the reporting of cases involving paedophiles: This is the PCC’s advice following
the News of the World’s high-profile campaign against paedophiles.
Prince Wlliam and privacy: This advice was given in a speech by Lord Wakeham as
Prince William reached 18 and was intending to go to University.
Reporting of international sporting events: A reminder to editors not to encourage
supporters of national teams to behave in a violent manner at international sporting
events.
Patients detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act 1983: A detailed
reminder about the terminology that should be used about patients held in hospital
under the Mental Health Act 1983. It also now issues The Editor’s Codebook, a
book of advice on issues drawn from the PCC’s experience.
The NUJ also puts out guidelines on various issues from time to time. In 1984,
in cooperation with the Health Education Council, they issued guidelines about HIV
and AIDS, although this did not appear to affect the messages put across in much
of the press coverage which represented AIDS and HIV as a ‘gay plague’ visited
upon those who deserved it (Wellings and Field 1996: 251). Other guidelines
include those on sexist language, racist reporting, reporting on disabled people and
mental health (see Appendices).
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Chapter 12
R E G U LATI O N
This chapter opens the second section of the book, moving from
ethics to regulation.
• It identifies the purpose of regulation and accountability

• Identifies basic regulatory systems
• Explains the difference between restraints and constraints
Regulation is an inevitable part of ensuring standards in everyday modern life.
Without regulation of much of the rest of society with which we come into contact
on a regular basis, life would become more dangerous and more uncomfortable.
Regulation and its associated agents of enforcement ensure that our after-work pint
is a full measure of un-watered beer, our purchase of petrol to take us home is of
specific quality and a full litre and that the food we eat when we get home is rela-
tively safe and free from excessive quantities of dangerous bacteria.
Many people over the years have condemned the ethical standards of newspaper
journalism in the UK, claiming that newspapers are intrusive and often inaccurate,
or worse. Only recently, the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, called for statutory
regulation of the press:
He urged a ‘stronger regime’ of press regulation and said: ‘My own view is that the code of conduct
operated through the Press Complaints Commission ought to be put on a statutory basis. We ought
to move towards a regulated regime for the media, where the media regulates it, not the state, but
the decisions are actually enforced.’ (Smith 2006a: 1)
The media cannot be exempt from the need for regulation to ensure acceptable
standards and so any debate about media regulation concerns the amount of regu-
lation and how it should be enforced.
There are a number of issues to be considered by media regulation. First are the
social and economic issues. Society needs to decide what controls, if any, it should
place on the ownership of newspapers or broadcast stations. It also needs to con-
sider whether there are any social limitations and how these should be enforced.
Then the concept of content regulation needs to be considered. Should newspapers
and broadcast stations have their content controlled or limited in some way?
Traditionally newspapers and broadcasting have always been treated differently
in the UK. A limited amount of bandwidth on the transmission spectrums has
always ensured a need for someone to choose who will be allocated the different
channels. If selection is taking place, then some sort of criteria are required and this
might as well be along the lines of who society thinks will best run a broadcast. The
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188 1 2 • Regulation
concept of only allowing broadcast stations into the hands of ‘a fit and proper
person’ has grown up over the years and become enshrined in the various broad-
casting Acts up to and including the Broadcasting Act 1996.
Newspapers, on the other hand, were not so limited. In theory, anyone could set
up a newspaper and attempt to sell it. The only restriction is the amount of money
required to launch a paper. Things are changing now, of course; with far more
bandwidths available on the digital networks, scores of channels are springing up
and it is probably now easier in real terms to launch a new TV channel than it is to
launch a new national newspaper.
The move towards digital broadcasting and the technological moves towards
convergence have made regulation of media an important debate around the world
and the UK is no exception. The government has announced that terrestrial broad-
casting will become digital only, with the analogue signal being switched off
progressively around the country from 2008 to 2012. Already in 2006 nearly 75 per
cent of the population can receive digital TV.
The internet is another fast developing medium with about two-thirds of adults
using it regularly, according to the Office of National Statistics in 2006. This is a
number that is clearly set to grow as the statistics show that more young people use
it than old people and the trend over the past few years has been for consistent
growth. Convergence of the internet and traditional television will lead to a blurring
of understanding about which is which, with consumers happily downloading
movies, music and television programmes from the internet and playing them as
though they were TV programmes. This expansion means that TV will no longer
require a limited number of broadcasters using a scarce resource. Server-based tech-
nology, combined with hugely improved broadband bandwidth will mean that soon
anyone can set up as a broadcaster, transmitting programmes from their server to
anyone who cares to link up. The BBC and commercial channels already offer the
chance to see or hear programmes that were missed, or to view the next episode
before it is transmitted. All of this is leading inevitably to a relaxation of regulation
rather than the risk of facing the kind of revolution that brought pirate radio to the
UK in the 1960s.
However, although the social and economic control of franchise holders may be
less important than before, it is unlikely that anyone will want a free-for-all when it
comes to content, and some element of regulation is bound to continue.
The other major debate surrounding regulation concerns ownership and funding.
Media can be publicly owned and funded from the public purse or privately owned
and funded either by advertising, subscription or by pay-per-view. The first two
methods of payment can fit a public service broadcasting model, where the funding
is not dependent directly on the viewer. The programme is transmitted and can be
received regardless of whether the viewer wants the programme or even turns on
their set to receive it.
Public service broadcasting is an important principle that needs to be understood
in the regulation debate. PSB has a long tradition in many countries, including the
UK, allowing viewers to see programmes that inform, educate and entertain without
having to decide whether to pay for that particular service at the point of delivery.
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Regulation 189
The debate hinges around the purpose of broadcasting and media. Do we make pro-
grammes to acquire money, or acquire money in order to make programmes?
Commercial broadcasters are there to make money to pay to shareholders as divi-
dends in the same way that newspapers do. This means they must maximise
audiences, either to maximise fees or subscriptions or to provide advertisers with the
largest possible audience of suitable people, for which the advertisers will then pay;
the bigger the potential audience, the more the advertisers will pay to reach it.
Public service broadcasting, though, should not be so directly concerned with
large audiences. It has long been the view of many that broadcasting that is aimed
solely at money-making will reduce the range and quality of broadcasting on offer.
Programmes that are cheap to make but attract a relatively large audience will
become the programmes of choice for commercial channels.
PSB has to fulfill eight principles. The first of these is that its output should be
universally available. This requires a good distribution network to ensure that all
citizens are able to receive programmes regardless of the geography or financial
status. It also means there should be no payment on consumption. The cost should
be carried in some other way, through taxation, perhaps, a licence system or some
other method that might allow for those who cannot afford to pay to be provided
with the service free or at reduced cost.
The second principle is universal appeal. The audience needs to be thought of as
citizens, not as consumers. This is not a market group being drawn together to be
sold products that are identified as being of particular interest to them. These audi-
ences are citizens who should be informed, educated and entertained. To give a
stark, but entirely random example: on the day this was written, peak-time evening
viewing had BBC 1 showing a documentary about Tony Martin, the man who was
jailed for killing a burglar; BBC 2 was showing a docudrama of The Plot against
Harold Wilson and Channel 4 was showing a documentary about A Picture of the
Falling Man from the 9/11 tragedy. On the commercial channels, Channel 3 was
showing Footballers Wives, a sex-and-shopping drama while Channel 5 was
showing Killer Instinct, a crime drama series. The PSB offerings are worthy, edu-
cational and universal, but perhaps not a popular choice. Footballers Wives, and to
a lesser extent the crime drama, are both aimed at maximising the audience during
peak time in order to provide a good platform for advertisers. Universal television
needs to appeal to a lot of people a lot of the time, but has to understand that some-
times it must produce programmes that will only appeal to a minority. It should not
always be aiming to attract big audiences. This is a difficult area with many critics
of PSB claiming that it should not be running any programmes that are very
popular. If programmes are popular, then surely people will pay for them. However,
these critics then continue, if PSB is only putting out programmes for minorities,
why is everyone having to fund the system?
The third principle of PSB is that minorities should be catered for. PSB should
allow a nation to speak to itself. This includes minority groups and working in min-
ority languages such as Welsh or Asian languages. Television should be educating
and explaining the modern condition, and so serving the public sphere is the fourth
principle. The commitment to educating the public is also an important part of PSB,
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making up the fifth principle. An important element of PSB is that it should be

distant from all vested interests. Government, big business, campaigning groups and
NGOs should all be listened to and their views transmitted to the viewer, but they
should not be in control of the broadcaster.
The seventh principle is that PSB should be structured to ensure that the compe-
tition is for good programmes, not for audiences. PSB should be providing good
programmes that draw big audiences because those people want to watch something
worthwhile; the aim should not be to attract as many viewers as possible by only
broadcasting populist themes. For instance, the Big Brother programmes attract big
audiences, but no one would call them worthy. However, it is possible to have
worthy dramas that are so good that they pull big audiences. Finally the role of
broadcasting should be to liberate the programme maker, not to restrict them to
doing things that are known to be popular and therefore to make money.
The BBC has provided PSB in the UK since TV first started in the 1930s. It has a
good international reputation and by and large produces high-quality TV. However,
many critics believe that programmes should only be funded by people making
direct choices about what they want to watch. They should be able to view what
they want, and pay for it, rather than watch what is good for them and is paid from
the public purse, by their licence fee.
The BBC’s Royal Charter, which allows it to transmit, runs out in December
2006 and there has been a long debate about its future and the future of broad-
casting in a digital age. The charter has been renewed, but there will be many
changes at the BBC which will be described in a later chapter.
Accountability systems
When we are talking about journalistic ethics, perhaps the most important part of
regulation is concerned with controlling content.
Much of the law concerning media regulation is about content: trying to ensure
that content is fair, decent and truthful. Broadcasting is more heavily controlled
than newspapers, partly because broadcasting is a much wider medium containing
not just news and current affairs but also programmes designed specifically to enter-
tain.
Restraints and constraints

We may need to restrain the media if it behaves irresponsibly to ensure that we have
a media that behaves in the way that the majority of people think is appropriate.
This presumably means it should behave in line with general views on human rights,
using its right to freely express itself responsibly, to carry information to its con-
sumers, whilst ensuring no undue damage to the human rights of those it writes
about.
Claude-Jean Bertrand (2001) identifies four reasons for the need to regulate jour-
nalism in order to ensure it behaves responsibly:
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• Commercialisation;
• Concentration of ownership;
• Decline of news; and
• Silence about inconvenient stories.
Some of these inevitably overlap. Ownership is often concentrated because it oper-
ates in a commercial marketplace, so not only is the journalism becoming more
commercialised in order to maximise profit, but also ownership becomes concen-
trated as a way of ensuring the major players are making a profit because there is
little competition. If there are only a handful of newspaper owners, as is the case in
the UK and many other countries, again it can hardly be surprising if those outlets
tend to concentrate on the same type of stories – ones they are confident will maxi-
mise audience, and are in the interests of the owners of the media outlets. This leads
to a decline in news, as all providers play it safe working to a news agenda they
know will attract the audience, and silence news that is inconvenient because it
plays to a social or political agenda that is inconvenient to the corporate ownership
of the media.
Restraints
Restraints are limitations placed on the media from external sources – usually the
law. Restraints can include civil and criminal law and cover a wide range of issues
such as protection of reputation, guaranteeing a fair trial, obscenity, matters
involving specially vulnerable groups, such as children or the victims of sexual
assaults, and security matters. In all these cases there are legal restrictions that limit
what journalists may write. These restrictions are part of the criminal law, so a jour-
nalist breaching the law could find him or herself before the courts, charged with a
serious offence. There are also civil offences, matters which are considered torts
(wrongs) by the courts for which the complainant can seek redress. Normally this
will be financial redress with the journalist or his/her employer forced to make a
payment, often quite substantial, in addition to any legal fees involved, but it can
also involve the court ordering an injunction, an order to prevent a paper from pub-
lishing a certain story. This would cover such matters as protecting intellectual
property (copyright), protection of reputation, invasion of privacy or breach of con-
fidence.
Constraints
Constraints are restrictions in which we play a role. These are often self-restrictions,
or consensual restrictions. This involves the industry, or parts of it, looking at how
it goes about its business; how it can ensure that it behaves responsibly and fairly,
offering its audience what they need, to standards that they can understand and
support.
Constraints will include self-regulatory bodies, professional associations, in-
company schemes and codes of conduct.
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Law versus ethics

There is a close relationship between the law and ethics as both are attempting to
restrain or constrain the media to behave responsibly, but the purpose of the law is
always to set the limits of behaviour, to identify those things we must do (or, often,
must not do). Ethics set out those things that we ought to do or not do. Think of a
hen’s egg – the hard outer shell represents the law – an easy-to-detect boundary that
marks the limits of responsibility. But the inner boundary between the white and the
yolk is a much softer boundary, and although it sits within the hard shell of the law,
it can easily be pushed in one direction or another, depending upon our desire and
beliefs.
The law has a more powerful effect on people than a code of conduct. A person’s
own moral code may supersede the law every time, but a professional code can only
be for guidance. This means that when there are conflicts between the law and pro-
fessional practice, the law will almost always take precedence.
However, there can be a major warping effect introduced by laws affecting the
media. There are a number of elements in UK law that override potential clauses in
a code of conduct, clauses which are often included in codes used in other countries.
Particular examples are protection of personal honour and presumption of inno-
cence, although there are other areas where the law cuts across codes of practice to
their detriment. Because this hard shell of the law cuts close to the softer yolk/white
boundary, it is often difficult to remember that that softer boundary exists, and to
concentrate only on the hard shell as an imposed impediment to be got around if
possible.
Media regulation in the UK, for instance, is strong in the area of presumption of
innocence. The British have traditionally believed in fair trials and have gone to
some lengths to protect the fairness and impartiality of the justice system. This is
particularly concerned with protecting the jury and being scrupulous about giving
the accused a fair trial. The right to be presumed innocent is protected by law, pre-
venting a journalist from talking about a case after an arrest. Because it is so firmly
protected, the British journalist does not consider it to be an ethical issue. After
arrest and charge, the accused is protected by various Acts of Parliament that make
it an offence for the media to publish anything other than legally limited facts about
the accused and the alleged crime. Before arrest (and indeed after the verdict) the
accused has some protection under the libel laws.
The protection of personal honour is also something the British feel strongly
about. No one likes the idea of his or her reputation being wrongly impugned (as
Case study 12.1 illustrates). The laws of defamation seek to ensure legal redress for
those so accused. Unfortunately, this means that any moral view on protection of
personal honour has been subsumed by the legal requirement.
The same is true about reporting on minors. This is not too surprising if British
society believes, as it seems to do if the law is any guide, that children are not fully
responsible for their actions until the age of 18. They continue going through a
learning process which means that they are not always fully responsible for their
actions and that their behaviour and relationship with society are redeemable.
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Although in discussion many journalists might accept this argument, that does not
mean they automatically consider not naming the child when faced with a story
about children.
In a PCC adjudication, the Reading Evening Post named an 11-year-old child
who had been admitted to hospital with meningitis:
while the Commission had sympathy with the newspaper’s wish to keep its readers properly
informed, it nevertheless considered that in the light of the action taken by the school, publication
of the boy’s name was not essential for the protection of public health. In reaching its conclusion
the Commission took into account that the school was named and that concerned parents
unconnected with the school could have made further enquiries. The complaint is therefore upheld,
but in view of the sensitive handling of the matter, the Commission decide on this occasion not to
censure the paper. (PCC, Report No. 37, 1997: 26)
It is unlikely that this was a deliberate attempt on behalf of the Reading Evening
Post to stretch the limits of the PCC Code. It was trying to keep readers informed
and the idea that the child should not have been named simply did not occur to
anyone. Naming youngsters is not an issue of major ethical debate for most UK
journalists although there is clear evidence that the strong line the PCC has taken
over the coverage of children has changed the approach of many newspapers in this
area (see Frost, 2004). While most journalists accept the sense in the law preventing
identification, they see it as a restrictive area of law to be worked around, not as the
first step in an ethical tussle which pits the rights of young people against the right
of the public to know.
Since the cost of legal action can scare publishers from telling the damaging truth it
has until recently meant they are more likely to write about the less rich, secure in the
knowledge that they could not afford to sue. However, lawyers now increasingly take
cases on a Conditional Fee Arrangement (CFA) (also called ‘no win, no fee’), where
the solicitor takes the case on the basis that the client need only pay a fee if the case is
won. This means that the client would not have to pay his or her lawyers if the case is
lost and the lawyers will claim their fee for winning from the defendant should their
client win. This often means fees are punitively high in order to cover the additional
risk the lawyer takes in pursuing the case. Many people believe this is having a chilling
effect on newspapers, making them far less likely to publish stories that could put them
at risk of a law suit. Possibly because of this, more and more tabloid newspapers are
invading the privacy of ordinary citizens who do not have the money to fight privacy
actions, rather than celebrities who do. The Star (12 February 1996) told the story of
a ‘do-gooder’ who ran off with the wife of his rugby coach friend. The story was based
entirely on the comments of a cuckolded and presumably embittered and vengeful
husband whose wife of twenty-one years had ended her marriage to be with her lover,
who had also left his wife. The abandoned wife did not want to be involved and told
the Star she did not wish to comment. There were no quotes from the other parties.
What possible public interest could there be in this story? Yet the Star ran it across two
pages. All the parties involved had their names used, their privacy invaded and their
personal honour dragged through the mud. There was nothing defamatory published,
provided it was true, but it was an unnecessary and unsavoury report.
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Case study 12.1 Libel suits and the press

For most British editors, it is not a debate about the morality of exposing someone’s
private doings that is the major deciding factor about whether to publish, but whether
the person can afford financially to sue. The debate has all too often become ‘will they
sue?’ not ‘are we right, and can we prove it?’ As the following examples show, things do
not always work out for those seeking to protect their reputation by suing the media,
and there have been some very expensive failed actions by the those in the public eye.
Gillian Taylforth, the actress in the BBC soap opera, East Enders, sued The Sun
newspaper in 1994 after it repeated a police allegation that she and her boyfriend had
committed an indecent act in a Range Rover on a slip road off the A1 in June 1992. She
lost in the High Court and was ordered to pay £500,000 costs.
Sonia Sutcliffe, the wife of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, lost an action against
the News of the World at a cost of £200,000, and Janie Allen, a South African journalist
lost an action against Channel 4 at a reputed cost of £300,000. These examples have
shown newspapers measuring a potential victim’s purse rather than their reputation.
The spectacular collapse of the then MP Neil Hamilton’s action against The
Guardian was blamed by him on the exorbitant cost of such actions, although Alan
Rusbridger, the Guardian’s editor, said that research carried out as part of the paper’s
defence showed its original allegations were ‘just the tip of the iceberg’. He added:
‘This research, together with documents which were disclosed to us by 10 Downing
Street as part of the legal process, made it apparent that [Mr Hamilton and Mr Greer]
didn’t have a leg to stand on’ (Electronic Telegraph, ‘Tory drops libel fight over sleaze’,
1 October 1996). The Guardian went on to publish further and far more detailed alle-
gations in the days following the collapse of the case. Hamilton continued to protest his
innocence but lost his parliamentary seat in the 1997 general election to the inde-
pendent candidate, Martin Bell, a former BBC journalist, standing on an
anti-corruption ticket.
Another Tory MP, Jonathan Aitken, the former Cabinet minister, faced legal costs
of £2 million after abandoning his action against The Guardian and Granada TV. The
Guardian produced documents which allegedly showed he lied under oath over details
of a weekend spent at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. He agreed to pay 80 per cent of the defen-
dants’ costs. The Daily Telegraph reported:
No reason was given for his decision to abandon the action.
Afterwards, Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said: ‘For three years he
has lied to newspapers, lied to the Cabinet Secretary, lied to the Prime Minister and
lied to his colleagues. Now he has made his fatal mistake by lying on oath to the High
Court.’ (Electronic Telegraph: ‘Aitken faces £2m bill in libel defeat’, 21 June 1997).
Aitken and his daughter were afterwards investigated by the police over allegations
of perjury. He resigned from the Privy Council, was found guilty of perjury and was
sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
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Accountability 195
What may be restrained?
The law can be used to restrain a number of things that identify the media. First is
ownership. This can include selecting who may be an appropriate person to own a
particular channel or newspaper. It could involve licensing or obliging the registra-
tion of newspapers or broadcast stations. This is a method that is used by many
states as a way of limiting criticism from the media. Only media which is supportive
of the government receives a licence or permission to broadcast or publish. For this
reason, registration is not normally used as a control method in Western-style
democracies. However, there has to be somebody to allocate frequencies to broad-
casters and some method of deciding who gets them. In the UK at the moment, this
is done by Ofcom, the Office of Communications, on the basis of competitive bids.
The method of publication or broadcast can also be state controlled. If the only
presses or broadcast equipment is stated owned, then there are automatic limits on
who may print or broadcast.
The cost of distribution or production can also be controlled as a method of
restraint. This could be through taxation – newspapers used to be obliged to attach
a stamp duty, a small payment per newspaper that often significantly increased the
cover price and made it more likely that people would not buy the paper. On the
other hand, some Scandinavian newspapers have their production methods sub-
sidised, whilst there is a state subsidy on newspaper distribution. Both methods
ensure that there is a wider distribution of newspapers than would otherwise be the
case, ensuring a wider participation in the democratic process by readers.
Moving on to the content of a newspaper or broadcast news bulletin, there can
be control over what matters are investigated or reported and who can investigate
them. It is also possible to license journalists so that only licensed practitioners can
work for newspapers or broadcast stations. These journalists could then face a dis-
ciplinary hearing if they did not behave responsibly, and have their licence to
practice removed. Governments can also limit what can be reported with specific
statutes. These might cover anything from security matters to personal details. The
UK has a number of laws preventing reporting in the areas of security, defence,
inciting hatred and the presumption of innocence.
What may be constrained?

Not surprisingly exactly the same range of limitations or assistances can be achieved
by constraints. This is particularly true in the area of responsible reporting where
constraints such as codes of conduct have a major role to play in determining how
reporters and other journalists should behave.
Accountability
Claude-Jean Bertrand identifies three types of media accountability systems –

systems that can help the constraint process (Bertrand 2001). The first of these is
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documents. These can be anything from a written code of ethics to a letters page, a
memo of guidance or a style book. The second type is people. This would include
an ethics council or an ombudsman or a readers’ editor. The third type is processes.
This would include education, research or questionnaires.
There are now four main constraint organisations in the UK. The Press
Complaints Commission is a self-regulatory body that regulates publications in the
UK. The Office of Communications, Ofcom, is a statutory regulatory body that reg-
ulates the broadcasting industry. It was set up under the Office of Communications
Act 2002 to administer the Communications Act 2003. It licenses broadcasters and
the telecommunications industries and monitors their performance.
The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, is a Public Service Broadcaster
run under a royal charter. It also regulates itself, although Ofcom has some
responsibility for some of its actions.
The National Union of Journalists has a code of conduct and an Ethics Council
charged with upholding it. The union has 40,000 members who are obliged to
uphold that code of conduct.
Regulatory systems
There are a several different types of regulatory systems, each with its own charac-
teristics of advantage and disadvantage.
Individual regulation
Individual regulation covers regulation by the individual or by a company or in-
house scheme. This system could be run by a single person and would cover the kind
of ethics that that person sees as important. Equally, it could be a company scheme.
The Guardian Media Group for instance, has its own regulatory system, through its
style book and its own press ombudsman. The BBC also has a detailed in-house
regulatory system. Such a scheme can have quite strong internal policing and
enforcement. A scheme run by an employer can have employment discipline to
enforce compliance: breach the code, and you could be sacked. However, its public
relations value is limited. An individual or a company can tell readers or viewers
about their code and methods of policing it, but they may not be convinced. Nor is
it that easy to discipline someone for a breach of the company’s code. Standards also
tend to be variable across the industry. One newspaper might have very high stan-
dards whilst another might have much lower. An individual system of regulation
does not allow customers to understand what the industry standard is. Standards
may also be arbitrary, picking up particular foibles from this editor or another. An
individual system does not allow for significant debate about the required standards.
Finally, there is no real appeal. If a journalist is accused of breaking the code or not
behaving to the required standard, it may not be possible to appeal against the
decision.
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Self-regulatory authorities
A self-regulatory body is one that is set up by the industry to control standards in
that industry. Such systems are often set up by an industry that is facing sustained
criticism over its performance and that wants to convince customers and the general
public at large that it is doing a good job to high standards. The self-regulatory body
is funded by the industry itself in some way – often by a levy on those who become
members. In the case of the Press Complaints Commission, the money is raised by
the Press Standards Board of Finance and comes from the whole industry. A self-
regulatory body is able to present itself as a way of protecting standards in the
industry and so offers good public relations for the industry, helping to convince
consumers that the industry is doing the best that it can to raise or maintain stan-
dards. It also often builds its enforcement programme around a code of conduct and
this is good for allowing debate about standards and what should be in the code.
However, such a body has a limited ability to enforce regulations. Since, for an
industry such as the media, it requires that all publishers join, it has to set its stan-
dards to the lowest common denominator. A newspaper or magazine that was
continually criticised might soon withdraw, leaving the authority with a serious
credibility problem. The PCC could not operate if several of the country’s major
newspapers were not members, and adhered to different standards or espoused no
standards at all. For this reason, enforcement can often be a problem. For a com-
mercial group of professionals requiring regulation, such as plumbers, travel agents
or double glazing firms, such a regulatory body can maintain high standards, since
it is in the consumer’s interests to be able to access a firm that is a member and so
the authority can expel members without worrying about the effect that will have
on the total industry. Such a scheme would not work in the media, however. If a
body such as the Press Complaints Commission is to carry any weight, all publishers
must be members. That means enforcement is limited because it is in the interests of
such an authority to limit upheld complaints; punishments are mild as serious pun-
ishments would be difficult to enforce, and would likely lead companies to quit.
Large fines, for instance, might not be paid, with the authority unable to enforce
them. Closures or other strong penalties would equally be unenforceable. There is
also nowhere to go to for appeal, either for the paper or for the complainant.
Although there have been some court cases attempting to show that the PCC has
not upheld its own code of conduct, none have yet forced a change in PCC decision.
Statutory body
A statutory body is defined by the government or legislation and is supported by
legislation. This means that a government minister appoints the members of the
authority and the authority has powers identified in statute. This gets over many of
the disadvantages of the self-regulatory authority. There can be a varied range of
penalties, including fines, or suspension from broadcast or publication. It is good for
public credibility, as clearly there is a body, set up under law, whose role is to police
the conduct of that industry. There can be a full ability to appeal such decisions to
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the High Court. However, there can be concerns about government interference.
Again, were this any other industry, that would not be a huge problem. The
financial sector has a number of statutory regulatory authorities and these ensure
our investments and insurance are looked after. However, in the media, the idea of
government influence and ability to silence the media through a statutory body
makes statutory regulation in this area much more controversial. Many people
would be very concerned about having statutory control of newspapers and maga-
zines. However, this does not seem so problematic in broadcasting, for some reason.
The various regulatory authorities for broadcasting have always been statutory,
without there being much concern about this.
The main broadcasting authority, Ofcom (The Office of Communications) was
set up under the Office of Communications Act 2002 to enforce the
Communications Act 2003. There had been a plan to make the Press Complaints
Commission a statutory body. Sir David Calcutt, in his second report, concluded
that this was the only way to deal with the press: ‘I recommend that the government
should now introduce a statutory regime’ (1993: para 9, p. xii). He went on to
describe in detail a tribunal composed of three judges which would have had the
power to require the printing of adjudications and apologies, to impose fines and
award costs. The Heritage Committee also recommended a statutory tribunal
although theirs was much more like the PCC but with the backing of the courts.
The law
A statutory body is often a much better choice for a government than having a range
of laws enforcing ethics. Laws covering all the elements of a journalistic code of
conduct would be very difficult to word and enforce. There is also the point that the
law says what we must not do – it sets limits – so often journalists would try to push
those limits to see how far they could be extended. However, with ethics, we are
advised what we ought to do and therefore journalists would be more guided than
prevented. Having a regulatory body that attempts to offer guidance, rather than a
law that merely sets the limits, should provide a better chance of raising standards
within journalism. The law sets standards at present for protection of reputation,
fair trials, presumption of innocence and discrimination. These are better adhered
to at the limits, but it is in the grey areas where the law becomes useless that there
needs to be more guidance for journalists. As has been explained, when societies
become particularly concerned about an ethical issue, they often include the prin-
ciple in their law. This has the advantage of short-circuiting any debate about the
issue.
A statutory body is much more manageable. It would not be too difficult to per-
suade a public, which is often disgusted by the antics of the tabloid press, that this
was just a way of giving the Press Complaints Commission teeth. The public is now
used to the Press Complaints Commission and accepts that it has industry support.
Despite the industry’s claims about the ‘horrors’ of statutory bodies, it is very diffi-
cult to portray such bodies as unacceptable when self-regulatory bodies doing the
same thing are claimed to be fine. The argument then seems to be that it is all right
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to have a controlling body only if it is run by the industry it is set up to control. Not
making the body statutory would be a difficult case to make, particularly when
broadcasters are already under the aegis of statutory bodies, begging the obvious
question: what is wrong with statutory regulation for the press if it is all right for
broadcasters?
A statutory body would have many of the advantages of the present system with
the force of law to back up its decisions. Crucially, it would also offer journalists a
right of appeal with a recourse to judicial review of the Commission’s judgments.
Regulatory councils
Newspaper proprietors have made it clear they dislike, and even fear, the idea of a
press regulated by law, and that any government considering it should be wary.
What proprietors and editors are prepared to accept is some form of code of prac-
tice and an accompanying regulatory authority. There are three types of enforcing
body for codes of conduct and ethical issues in newspapers and broadcasting that
can be set up, each with their own unique advantages (see Exhibit 12.1).
Exhibit 12.1 Regulatory bodies and their powers

A voluntary regulatory body: This is usually set up by the industry to consider com-
plaints. It may also be a lobbying body for the industry and have other functions such
as training, standards and promotion. Such industry bodies have been formed in many
countries, sometimes following pressure from the government. One of the first was
Sweden (see Chapter 14). There is a wide variety of industry-appointed regulatory
bodies. Some, such as Sweden’s, are true cross-industry bodies with representatives of
editors, journalists and proprietors. Some, such as Britain’s PCC, are set up only by
proprietors. The only power these bodies have is to ask newspapers or broadcasters to
publish their adjudications so that newspapers would be obliged to publish any criti-
cism within their columns. Many councils contain members of the public to balance the
self-interest of the industry and to add a perspective that only interested but non-
expert members of the public can bring.
Voluntary regulatory bodies with statutory powers: These councils are similar to
voluntary regulatory bodies but have statutory authority to fine or punish transgressors
in other ways. Bodies of this type exist in a few countries, for example India and
Sweden, and it was proposed for Britain by the Heritage Select Committee in 1993.
Neither the then Conservative government nor the later Labour administration wanted
to move away from the present system of press self-regulation.
These bodies are still voluntary, although they may be funded by public money, and
various schemes can be suggested to determine the constitution. The one suggested by
the Heritage Committee required lay and professional members. The code of conduct
in these circumstances has the support of law and some section of the judiciary is
usually used as a court of appeal. Fines, or strict instructions about how and where in
a publication the council’s findings should be used, are standard punishments. The
punishment element and right of appeal against a decision of the regulatory body by a
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journalist or publication adds a strength to this system that does not exist in the solely
voluntary bodies.
Statutory regulatory bodies: These councils are constituted under statute and have
legal obligations and powers, but are not part of the judiciary. They are funded by
public money or by money collected for licences or fines. The code of conduct in these
circumstances is supported by statute and so there is a right of appeal. Fines, licence
suspensions or withdrawals are often used to punish infractions of the code. The pun-
ishment element and right of appeal against a decision of the regulatory body by a
journalist or publication adds a strength to this system that does not exist in the volun-
tary bodies.
A statutory tribunal: Such a body was recommended by Sir David Calcutt QC
(Calcutt, 1993) in his review of press regulation. It would have statutory powers to
investigate and punish. Such tribunals would have contained at least one judge and
would have been closer to courts of law than the arbiters of professional morals that the
voluntary or even statutory bodies can claim to be. Sir David Calcutt, in his 1993
review, found that the Press Complaints Commission was not working and wanted to
set up a Press Complaints Tribunal. This would have had three members and would
have heard complaints on an adversarial basis and been entitled to punish newspapers
and magazines by instructing them how to present adjudications in the paper or mag-
azine, or have the power to fine transgressors.
Ofcom is a body constituted under statute with powers to punish – either with fines
or the withdrawal of the licence if necessary – broadcasting companies that break the
rules. The BBC is awarded its charter under statute and has obligations for the stan-
dards of its broadcasts. The decisions of all these bodies can be challenged in the courts
and they must all report annually on their activities to the Secretary of State for
Culture, Media and Sport.
Working with different styles of media council
Media councils (as opposed to press or broadcasting councils) work in different

ways. Those which are true cross-industry bodies tend to have codes of conduct that
represent that broad church of views. Codes, such as those in Sweden, often contain
more matters of concern about the gathering of news material while Britain’s press
code, drawn up by editors and publishers, is much more about what may be pub-
lished. Only intense public pressure, particularly after the death of the Princess of
Wales, has forced the Press Complaints Commission in Britain to include additional
clauses covering news-gathering on private land and the use of long telephoto
camera lenses. Before 1998 we would have to look to the National Union of
Journalist’s Code of Conduct to see clauses which emphasised the moral aspects of
how stories are gathered, rather than worrying solely about whether they are pub-
lished (see Appendix 2). The PCC’s new code (PCC, 2006) contains much stronger
clauses on harassment and privacy.
Often countries have separate bodies for dealing with press and broadcasting and
this may even mean different codes. Britain, as we have seen, has press and broad-
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Enforcing ethical standards 201
cast regulatory bodies, one statutory and one voluntary. Sweden has one code
upheld by both broadcasters and print journalists. This is partly, at least, because
the code’s historical roots lie in the development of print journalism, with any
additional clauses required for broadcasting being added as necessary. Britain and
many other European countries developed press and broadcasting councils at dif-
ferent times and for different reasons. This means that their codes of conduct are
often different as well. It is certainly true that Britain’s press code and broadcast
code are both posited from the position of a publisher or editor, yet many of the
really interesting ethical issues occur whether or not the material is published, as
Case study 12.2 illustrates.
Enforcing ethical standards
Statutory enforcement of ethical standards

State control of ethical standards is usually enforced either by the law or a statutory
regulatory body or a mixture of both. Regulation is either by a practitioners’ body,
such as the Ordine dei Giornalisti in Italy, which registers practitioners and can
prevent people practising if they are found to be in breach of the code, or it is a
statutory industry council made up of a mix of proprietors, editors, practitioners
and lay people which is able to condemn bad practice and in some cases level a
penalty against the offender. Usually this is a fine. Systems such as this operate in a
number of Western European countries and elsewhere. South Africa, Australia and
India all have press councils. As explained, nearly every culture finds it necessary to
enforce some issue of press ethics by introducing legislation. Most Western-style
democracies have developed a cultural ethic for journalists that covers in some way
most or all of the issues of truth, privacy, harassment and fairness. In some cases the
society concerned will enforce that ethic by legislation and it is one of the more
interesting and revealing areas of study for those seeking difference in national cul-
tures and identities.
Swedes and the Dutch, for instance, are generally seen as liberal and free-thinking
and have very little legislative control of media ethics. Their codes of conduct are
controlled by media councils. Yet their journalists stick to the codes of ethics more
strongly than journalists do in Britain, and journalists in Sweden and Holland are
often shocked by the lengths to which journalists in Britain will go to get a story.
In Britain we have a much more rigid approach to such things. ‘There should be
a law against it’ is our first thought when something displeases us. The only
trouble is that when we produce a law against something, we then spend much of
our time complaining about excessive regulation and trying to find a way around
it.
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Case study 12.2 The ethics of gathering of information

I came across a case of a freelance photographer working in England who would dress
as a paramedic to attend the scenes of accidents to allow him closer access to the victim.
In one incident, an 11-year-old boy was dragged from a canal and resuscitated. He had
been dried, as he was suffering from hypothermia. The photographer splashed him
with water again in order to get a more ‘dramatic’ picture. This sort of behaviour is rep-
rehensible and would be accepted by very few people, journalists and public alike.
However, there is no way to censure it. The Press Complaints Commission cannot
handle it – it can only censure the newspaper responsible for publication and in this
case there isn’t one as the photographer was freelance. Even if there were a newspaper
involved, it is very possible that it would not be aware of, or condone, this person’s
practice.
Voice or video recordings made in secret are subject to the same ethical problems.
Once a recording has been made, it is too late to decide whether it was ethical to make
the recording: we can only debate whether it should have been broadcast or published
as a transcript. Does this matter in practice? Can one imagine circumstances when the
recording is unethical but the broadcasting or publication is not? Imagine a tape
recording of a telephone call by a Cabinet minister, which exposed him as corrupt.
Invading the minister’s privacy by listening to the call is difficult to justify, but pub-
lishing a story that the minister is corrupt, backed by transcripts of phone calls, is an
entirely different matter. The journalist could then justify the invasion of privacy as
being in the public interest. Of course in the broadcast area, secret recording is some-
thing the Broadcasting Standards Commission is specifically charged to consider.
Many people still blame the paparazzi for the death of the Princess of Wales. Had
they not been following her car in order to take pictures, some say, the accident might
not have happened. Leaving aside the what-ifs, there is certainly little question that fol-
lowing the crash, a number of photographers (approximately ten although witnesses
differ in their accounts) were at the scene taking pictures before the ambulance and
police arrived. This was generally considered so shocking that no British publication or
broadcast used any of the many pictures that must have been taken of the crash site and
the rescue. Yet pictures and videos of this sort are commonly used in news reports,
from the assassination of President Kennedy to numerous train and plane crashes here
and abroad. Even the many documentaries that have since been broadcast, speculating
on the cause of the car accident, have not been prepared to risk attack by using photo-
graphs of the scene.
Few examples show as starkly the difference in ethical approach of the journalist and
the public. Few journalists (I have not spoken to one) would find it acceptable for a pho-
tographer at the scene of such an incident to report to their news desk that they had
not bothered to take pictures because they did not think it was quite right. The pho-
tographer’s job is to take pictures of news events and that is what he or she should do.
That does not mean that common humanity goes out of the window. Of course, the
ever-present mobile phones should have been used to call an ambulance and of course
basic first aid or rescue should have been carried out to the best of the photographer’s
ability. But taking photographs only takes a short time.
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There are a number of books about regulation that are worth reading and these include: Claude-
Jean Bertrand (2001) M*A*S Transaction (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick) and
Claude-Jean Bertrand (2003) An Arsenal for Democracy (Hampton Press Inc., Cresskill, NJ).
Professor Bertrand also runs a website with a lot of information about regulation and is trying to
develop a database of regulation country by country.
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Chapter 13
H I STO RY O F P R I NT
R E G U LATI O N
This chapter examines the history and development of regulation

in print journalism and covers:
• The development of regulatory concerns through the early part of the twentieth
century
• The founding and development of the Press Council (PC)
• Its replacement by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC)
Press regulation first became an issue abroad. Sweden has had a press council from
the beginning of the twentieth century: ‘The Publicists Club [of Sweden], which was
formed in 1874 with journalists, newspaper editors and other publishers as its
members, had, on a number of occasions in the beginning of the 1900s, served as a
self-appointed tribunal to hear complaints against newspapers’ (Nordlund 1991: 1).
Even before this, the Swedes had been adjudicating on complaints in an informal
way. It also developed the first journalistic code in 1900, although this was not
widely adopted. The French were next, with the Syndicat National des Journalistes
(the French trade union) publishing a charter of conduct in 1918 (PC 1990: 285).
Other European countries had also considered the subject and some had rudimen-
tary laws by the middle of the 1800s. In the USA, journalism college teachers were
discussing ethics and the need for journalists to set their own standards at least as
early as 1913 (Bleyer 1913: 357).
In the UK, an indication of journalistic thinking on ethics around this time could
be found in a small handbook for journalists, published in 1873 (possibly the first
UK book designed to teach journalism), which included a chapter about ‘Reporting
Etiquette’. This identified an early need to improve the behaviour of journalists.
(Reed 1876). It is interesting to note that this chapter was only inserted in the
second edition and nothing like it was in the first edition published ten years pre-
viously.
This etiquette was more about what the NUJ today describes in its rule book as
‘Working Practices’ (NUJ, 2005) than about professional ethics. The book’s main
concerns were about the job (salaries, qualifications and working practices), libel,
the duties of the reporter and note-taking (shorthand, by which it set great store,
and transcribing the notes). The author was concerned about taking an accurate
note and transcribing that accurately for publication, but he did not mention other
ethical issues. Discussing reporting meetings, for instance, he says: ‘In taking notes
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History of print regulation 205
of a meeting, care should be taken to distinguish the speakers with accuracy’ (Reed,
1876: 57). This also applies to speakers’ names, which Reed advised require special
care (ibid.: 58).
He also advised that a reporter should not misrepresent a view antithetical to
those of his paper:
Few papers report both sides at equal length and with absolute impartiality; and the reporter must
be in a measure guided by the known sympathies of his journal, in selecting the speakers to be most
fully reported. (Ibid.: 59)
However, Reed had nothing to say about the ethics of reporting methods or about
intrusion into privacy. Another early writer about the craft of journalism also had
little to say about such issues as intrusion, straightforward means of reporting, or
harassment. Pendleton warned of the dangers of inaccuracy with examples of
‘mirth-provoking errors’ such as: ‘Helen of Troy’ described as ‘Ellen of Troy’, and
the orator who quoted ‘O come, thou goddess fair and free. In heaven yclept
Euphrosyne’, only to find it transcribed in press as ‘O come, thou goddess fair and
free; in heaven she crept and froze her knee’ (Pendleton 1890: 173–4). Again, had
nothing was said about such issues as intrusion, or straightforward means of
reporting. This is not because the types of stories covered are in some way more
ethical in themselves. Pendleton lists an average day’s news diary with such stories
as: Steam tram accident at Bradford; Wife murder; Colliery explosion; Lord
Salisbury in Nottingham; Double execution at Armley; and a Mill fire (Pendleton
1890: 154).
It might be light on celebrity compared to today but there are plenty of sen-
sational stories and sensationalism in pursuit of readership, and therefore profits, is
a technique as old as mass readership. Ever since universal education opened the
media up to a mass audience, the media has been pursuing readers. Talk of golden
ages of the Press when everything was done by the book and ethics were the first
consideration is just that – talk. As Raymond Snoddy says in The Good, the Bad
and the Unacceptable (1993: 19): ‘When you get down to the fundamentals of ques-
tionable journalism – sex, violence, sensationalism, bias, inaccuracy and forgery – it
is remarkable how little has changed.’ He illustrates this with a story taken from the
first issue of the News of the World in 1843, telling of the trial of Edward Morse, a
chemist who drugged a young girl before violating her and dumping her in a canal.
Not that the News of the World was the first newspaper to realise that sex and viol-
ence sell newspapers. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Press
suffered many of the same complaints to which it is prey today. Yet as more and
more people learned to read, newspapers became more and more popular.
Similar claims to falling standards and golden ages had been identified in the
1930s. The NUJ was particularly concerned about the issue of the responsibility of
press freedom. Plans to beat what were perceived as falling standards included a law
to prevent multi-ownership; a well organised workforce; a well-paid work force and
a conscience clause, allowing journalists to make ethical decisions about their work
without fear of losing their job (campaigns which the union continues to pursue to
this day) (Mansfield 1935).
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206 1 3 • History of print regulation
Large newspaper groups or the ‘gramophone press’ were seen as anathema to

good journalism. Despite claims about falling standards and sensationalism, there
were those who failed to see the past as a golden era of quality journalism and they
pointed out that sixteenth-century journalists were adept at yellow journalism
(Mansfield 1943: 523). However, Mansfield was concerned that sensational jour-
nalism had recently become ‘invested with a sinister significance’.
The question [of sensational journalism] has become so acute in recent times that newspaper
organisations have been compelled to give serious attention on grounds of safety as well as
morality. (Ibid.: 524)
The Newspaper Society was also concerned about the problem and condemned
one incident as ‘an unusual and unfortunate example of a tendency created by
severe competition between popular newspapers’. It went on to say that it was
impossible to lay down a code for reporters and photographers and that the only
possible remedy was to stimulate the strong feeling already existing in the industry
(ibid.: 525–6).
There should be no surprise about the importance of the Press during the early
part of the century. Until the late 1930s, the Press was unchallenged in terms of its
ability to bring up-to-date news to its readers. During and after the war, radio and
then television were allowed to develop freely. The war had seen a halt of television
development, but radio had become extremely important as a way of bringing news
to people during a period of considerable national anxiety. Many serious threats
existed: the potential for invasion; the risks to troops fighting abroad, many of
whom were the loved ones of those at home; and then the day-to-day weariness of
living under a war economy.
Paper rationing meant that newspapers were not able to continue publishing
large numbers of editions, whilst the fast-growing BBC was able to bring people
news of the war as and when it happened. Radio’s power as an alerting medium is
unsurpassable by print and it can be no surprise that by the end of the war many
households were using the radio as a major source of immediate news as well as
entertainment.
This put the Press under considerable pressure. Publishers were used to com-
peting with each other to get the story first. Trying to use this method of fighting
back against radio, and later television, was doomed to failure. Even with limits
placed on the times early television could broadcast, fixed newspaper edition times
meant the Press could not compete with regular bulletins and news flashes. The
Press had to move from being an alerting medium to become more of a reflective
medium.
Newspapers were soon trying other methods of holding readers’ attention. For
the quality papers this was the in-depth analysis of the headlines provided by the
radio. It was a successful system for their educated readership, who wanted up-to-
date and accurate information and who were keen to find out the full background.
The majority, however, were unwilling to spend the time and effort learning the
background, or were not interested. The papers which aimed at this mass market
took a different approach. The selling power of gossip, titillation and sensationalism
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History of print regulation 207
had always been appreciated and used to sell papers, but now the differentiation
between people-orientated papers and issue-orientated papers became even starker.
It is difficult to tell whether the gossip about members of the royal family and
celebrities led to the personality-orientated culture that boomed during the 1950s
and 1960s or whether this culture reinforced and made popular what the popular
papers had started. Either way, it ensured that papers stayed far more popular than
many in the industry had feared during this difficult transition to an electronic media
age. The circulation figures of both tabloid and broadsheet rose during the 1940s
and although they fell back during the 1960s and 1970s, in a slump which continues
to this day, the decay in circulation was considerably slower than many predicted.
Many of the first codes of ethical practice were drafted in America in the early
1920s with quite a number being produced in the period 1921–23. Nelson Antrim
Crawford published a number of them in his book, The Ethics of Journalism
(1924), one of the first books published in the field. European countries followed
with codes of conduct in the 1920s and 1930s.
The first signs of a determination to do something about journalistic ethics in the
UK came in the 1930s. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) decided at its
annual conference in 1936 to introduce a code of conduct. There had been talk of
such a code for a couple of years, from a number of sources.
At the time, this was seen as a controversial issue and many NUJ members were
opposed to the idea. They felt that a code would lead to control of professional
issues being held centrally, and that ethics should be an individual matter of con-
science (The Journalist, March 1936). The final document, agreed at the union’s
annual conference, was a mixed offering describing working practices, of the sort
identified by Reed in his ‘Reporting Etiquette’ (1876: 103–9), alongside broader
moral concerns of the sort we would recognise today as being appropriate for a code
of conduct. There were thirteen clauses, starting with a general call for a member to
‘do nothing that would bring discredit on himself, his Union, his newspaper, or his
profession’. The clauses broke down into three classes:
Behaviour to other union members and colleagues;

Behaviour towards an employer;
Professional standards.
The professional standards section of the code covered issues of concern to the
media, the public in general and the reporter in five clauses, identifying the areas of
fair and honest collection of truthful news facts, the freedom of the press to publish
them, along with comment and criticism and warnings to journalists to protect con-
fidential sources and that it was wrong to falsify information. They were reminded
of the risks of libel and that there should be fair play in reporting court stories.
The clauses that would be identified as being ethical clauses now are:
9. Freedom in the honest collection and publication of news facts, and the rights of fair comment
and criticism, are principles which every journalist should defend.
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10. A journalist should fully realise his personal responsibility for everything he sends to his paper
or agency. He should keep Union and professional secrets, and respect all necessary
confidences regarding sources of information and private documents. He should not falsify
information or documents, or distort or misrepresent facts.
11. In obtaining news or pictures, reporters and press photographers should do nothing that will
cause pain or humiliation to innocent, bereaved, or otherwise distressed persons. News,
pictures, and documents should be acquired by honest methods only.
12. Every journalist should keep in mind the dangers in the laws of libel, contempt of court, and
copyright. In reports of law court proceedings it is necessary to observe and practise the rule
of fair play to all parties.
13. Whether for publication or suppression, the acceptance of a bribe by a journalist is one of the
gravest professional offence.
(Mansfield 1943: 527)
All of these were about how the stories were gathered and used. The only clause
that looked at the effect a journalist’s work had on people was the request to jour-
nalists to do nothing to cause pain or humiliation to innocent, bereaved or
otherwise distressed persons. This had only recently been seen as an issue of
concern: both proprietors’ and journalists’ organisations passed motions in 1937
that condemned methods of news-gathering that caused distress to private persons.
The NUJ’s National Executive Council agreed that:
reporters should not be permitted to intrude into the private lives of private people; that they
should not usurp the functions of official or private detectives, and that they should confine their
activities to the reporting of, and commenting on, facts. (Ibid.: 525)
However, despite this concern about privacy, no clause was put in the code of
conduct, an issue that was later raised by the Committee on the Law of Defamation
meeting ten years later. There is also no mention in this NUJ code about dealing
with various vulnerable groups, a matter of considerable concern to the modern
NUJ and the Press Complaints Commission. The PCC in particular sees one of its
major roles as being the protection of vulnerable people (PCC 2002: 1).
The Institute of Journalists (IoJ), a rival trade union at that time, wanted to go
even further and agitated within the industry and Parliament for a State Register of
Journalists. This would have meant that anyone calling him- or herself a journalist
would have had to be registered and qualified by diploma. The NUJ strongly
opposed this move and when a parliamentary bill was drafted by the IoJ, the NUJ
at its 1937 conference decided to oppose the creation of a statutory body for jour-
nalism. The motion to oppose ‘was carried amid cheers and without a single vote
being recorded against it’ (Bundock 1957: 150).
The NUJ felt that licensing would limit the wide and theoretically free access to
the media. The war ended this element of debate and licensing has not been an issue
in Britain since then, although the NUJ did debate and dismiss the idea at its annual
conference in 2005. While some European countries do license journalists, it is gen-
erally viewed in this country as a gross interference with the freedom of the Press.
Journalists in the UK are not generally considered to be professionals as journalism
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is ‘the exercise by occupation of the right to free expression available to every

citizen’ (Robertson 1983: 3).
Towards regulation
The 1947–49 Royal Commission on the Press was set up by the government with
the object of ‘furthering free expression of opinion through the Press and offering
the greatest practicable accuracy in the presentation of news, to inquire into the
control, management and ownership of the newspaper and periodical press and the
news agencies, including the financial structure and the monopolistic tendencies in
control, and to make recommendations thereon’. The Commission was initiated by
the NUJ. Two MPs, both journalists, moved a motion in the House of Commons on
29 October 1946 calling for a Commission to investigate the Press, having regard
for the monopolistic tendencies in control of the Press. The demand for an enquiry
had been developing throughout the union for the previous two years, as Maurice
Webb, a member of the NUJ’s National Executive Council explained to the House.
The 1947–49 Royal Commission was chaired by Sir William David Ross, and
reported its findings to the government in 1949. The Commission made a number
of recommendations, including the idea of setting up a General Council of the Press
to represent the common interests of the Press as a whole, in particular ‘the problem
of recruitment and training, and the problem of formulating and making effective
high standards of professional conduct’. In its report, the Commission said:
It is remarkable that although a number of organisations exist to represent sectional interests within
the Press, there is none representing the Press as a whole. It is not that those engaged in newspaper
production are unaware of the Press as an entity: they are on the contrary acutely aware of it and
jealous for its independence and its reputation. It is the more surprising that there is no one body
concerned to maintain either the freedom of the Press or the integrity on which its reputation
depends: no single organisation expresses the common interest in these things of the men who share
responsibility for the character of the Press; and there is no means, other than ad hoc machinery
created to deal with particular problems, by which this common interest can be translated into action.
Indeed, the Press has taken fewer steps to safeguard its standards of performance than perhaps any
other institution of comparable importance. (Royal Commission on the Press 1949: 165)
The Commission went on to recommend that the General Council of the Press,
by ‘censuring undesirable types of journalistic conduct should build up a code of
conduct in accordance with the highest professional standards’ (ibid.: 170). The
report then listed objects later adopted by the Council:
1. To preserve the established freedom of the British Press.
2. To maintain the character of the British Press in accordance with the highest professional and
commercial standards.
3. To consider complaints about the conduct of the Press or the conduct of persons and
organisations toward the Press, to deal with these complaints in whatever manner might seem
practical and appropriate and record resultant action.
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4. To keep under review developments likely to restrict the supply of information of public
interest and importance.
5. To report publicly on developments that may tend towards greater concentration or monopoly
in the Press (including changes in ownership, control and growth of press undertakings) and to
publish statistical information relating thereto.
6. To make representations on appropriate occasions to the Government, organs of the United
Nations and to press organisations abroad.
7. To publish periodical reports recording the council’s work and to review, from time to time,
developments in the Press and factors affecting them. (Ibid.: 174)
The 1947–49 Commission wanted a general council to encourage ‘the growth of

the sense of public responsibility and public service amongst all those engaged in the
profession of journalism whether as directors, editors or journalists and of fur-
thering the efficiency of the profession and the well being of those who practised it’
(ibid.). Although the Press Council was proposed in the 1949 Commission report,
nothing was done immediately. By 1951, the two main newspaper proprietor organ-
isations, the National Publishers’ Association (NPA) and the Newspaper Society
(NS) had prepared draft proposals. These provided for voluntary organisations with
twelve editorial members and twelve managerial members charged with preserving
the established freedom of the British press. The inclusion of lay members on the
Council (20 per cent was proposed by the Commission) was opposed by all the pro-
prietorial bodies and their views were endorsed by a majority of non-proprietorial
bodies. The organisations involved in the talks were:
• NPA (Newspaper Publishers’ Association)
• NS (Newspaper Society)
• SDNS (Scottish Daily Newspaper Society)
• SNPA (Scottish Newspaper Publishers’ Association)
• NUJ (National Union of Journalists)
• IoJ (Institute of Journalists)
• GBNE (Guild of British Newspaper Editors)
As the talks continued, a private member’s bill proposing a general council for
the press was presented in the House of Commons by Mr C.J. Simmons and had its
second reading on 28 November 1952. The debate was adjourned, but sparked con-
siderable interest, and in February 1953 an agreed draft for a council emerged. Lay
members were excluded and there was no independent chair. The Council held its
first meeting on 21 July 1953. The objectives of the new Press Council are shown in
Exhibit 13.1.
The new Council’s objectives excluded the Commission’s proposals for the
Council to deal with complaints. It also ignored proposals for an independent chair
and some lay membership. The Commission had wanted the Council to censure
undesirable conduct by journalists and build up a code based on the highest pro-
fessional standards, detailing its work in an annual report. The Council did,
however, accept in its procedures that people might complain: ‘provided that in
dealing with representations which it may receive about the conduct of the Press or
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Exhibit 13.1 The objects of the new Council

1. To preserve the established freedom of the British Press.
2. To maintain the character of the British Press in accordance with the highest pro-
fessional and commercial standards.
3. To keep under review any developments likely to restrict the supply of information
of public interest and importance.
4. To promote and encourage methods of recruitment, education and training for jour-
nalists.
5. To promote a proper functional relation among all sections of the profession.
6. To promote technical and other research.
7. To study developments in the Press which may tend towards greater concentration
or monopoly.
8. To publish periodical reports recording its own work and reviewing from time to
time the various developments in the Press and the factors affecting them. (General
Council of the Press 1954: 32)
of any person towards the Press, the Council shall be required to consider only those
from complainants actually affected and shall deal with such in whatever manner
may seem to it (the Council) practical and appropriate’ (ibid.: 33). The Commission
had also suggested that the Council should examine the practicability of a compre-
hensive pension scheme, to promote the establishment of common services and to
act as a representative of the Press to government and intergovernmental bodies.
The new Council ignored these recommendations.
The new body was made up of the fifteen editorial representatives and ten mana-
gerial representatives from the following groups: national newspaper editors (NPA),
provincial newspaper editors (NS and GBNE), Scottish newspaper editors (SNPA
and SDNS), the NUJ and the IoJ. It was funded by a levy of one twenty-fifth of the
Council’s expenditure for every seat. Colonel the Hon J. J. Astor of The Times was
elected the first chairman and Sir Linton Andrews of the Yorkshire Post the vice-
chairman.
The first Council came across many of the same problems that tax the PCC
today. Crime, sex and scandal were all there to be reported. In addition, there were
some problems we no longer face.
Reports of proceedings against homosexual suspects caused some public protests. In the view of the
Council, such reports, carefully sub-edited in accordance with the law against indecent mention of
physiological details, did a useful public service. If a great evil is rife in our midst, the facts should
be made known in order that a search for the right means of reform might be encouraged. (Ibid.: 9)
The determination of what is right and wrong has certainly changed even if the
self-righteous and pompous justification of its exposure in the papers has not. A
quick flip to the Press Council Report of 1990 shows how things have changed
with a judgment headed: ‘Poof and Poofter offensive’. ‘Although the words “poof”
and “poofter” are in common parlance, they are so offensive to male homosexuals
that publishing them is not a matter of taste or opinion within a newspaper editor’s
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discretion’, the Council said (Press Council, 1990: 189). What a difference thirty-
six years makes.
One of the first privacy cases dealt with by the new Council was the publishing
of a series of articles by John Dean, the ex-valet of the Duke of Edinburgh. The
editor of the Sunday Pictorial justified publication, saying he was satisfied with their
authenticity and that there was nothing derogatory in them (General Council of the
Press 1954: 37).
In April 1955, Colonel Astor resigned from the Council because of ill-health and
Sir Linton Andrews took over the chair. With the Council less than two years old,
the Prime Minister was asked in the House of Commons (on 13 July 1955) whether
he intended to take steps to establish a press council with statutory powers to deal
with complaints. Sir Anthony Eden replied that he found it very hard to see how
statutory powers could be effectively arranged. The Council had hit trouble with its
first report. Attacking the use of the phrase ‘private and confidential’ by ‘many a
fussy little jack-in-office [who] would like to set up his own Official Secrets Act’
(ibid.: 6) was seen by some as a doctrine allowing them the right to publish any-
thing. In its second report, the Council went to some lengths to define the difference
between arbitrarily labelling something ‘private and confidential’ and the times
when the Press might consider itself to be bound by such a description (General
Council of the Press 1955: 7).
Four complaints were received on this question. First, a ballot by the Educational
Institute of Scotland on the question of a strike fund was published despite the
papers being clearly marked ‘Private and Confidential. Not to be communicated to
the Press.’ The Council agreed that marking it ‘Private and Confidential’ did not
prevent a newspaper publishing it if it considered the subject was one of general
importance and interest. Secondly, the town clerk of Poole Council asked the Press
Council if the Poole and Dorset Herald was justified in printing a document sent
only to the members of the authority, and then refusing to disclose the identity of
the person from whom the document was obtained. The Press Council agreed it was
so justified. Thirdly, the County Councils Association wrote to the Press Council
asking if editors would feel themselves duty-bound to uphold the confidentiality of
papers so marked that had been sent with other documents to the press. The
Council pointed out that while embargoes should be upheld, any editor would
weigh in the balance the public interest and would not feel bound to keep infor-
mation marked ‘confidential’ private. Fourthly, Llanelly Town Council ran into
similar problems to Poole over the publication of a report on council house rents in
the Llanelly Star. The town clerk received a similar reply.
The second report also raised concerns about the naming of children in court
cases (ibid.: 29). Several complaints had been received by the General Council from
readers. Editors by and large agreed with the complainants. Either a name was
printed in error, or the editors felt obliged to print something they were not
expressly forbidden to do. At this stage, the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act
allowed the court to prevent identification and forbade the use of photographs. But
if a judge forgot to direct the court in this matter, as often happened, the names
could be and often were published. The General Council wrote to the then Home
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Secretary, Major Lloyd George, in December 1954. He wrote back in April 1955
without a final answer. He said he fully agreed with the Council and that he was
intending to contact chiefs-of-police to seek their cooperation in ensuring the court’s
attention was drawn to suitable cases (ibid.: 34).
The General Council also came under attack from some editors. One editor took
particular exception to the mild criticism meted out to him by the Press Council.
Alastair Grant, Managing Editor of the Highland Herald sparked a row after
Inverness magistrates complained to the Press Council when only one of three cases
brought against coal merchants for selling underweight, dealt with by magistrates
on the same day, was reported in the Highland Herald, something they felt was
unfair. A copy of their letter, written by the Town Clerk, was sent to the Highland
Herald by the Press Council. Mr Grant responded: ‘Fortunately, town clerks or
town councils have quite definitely not the right to instruct him [the editor] in the
matter, nor, as you know, has the Press Council, and I resent this ill-advised attempt
to do so.’
The Council expressed its regret over Mr Grant’s attitude ‘towards the council’s
efforts to investigate a complaint’. ‘The Council looked on this attempt to brush
aside the complaint without a word of explanation as high-handed, unworthy and
a misuse of editorial power.’ This brought an explosive response from the editor,
who published a letter to his readers in the paper four days later describing the
Council as ‘a vague and powerless body’ and accusing it of inaccurate reporting.
The Council responded with a resolution regretting the publication of a ‘totally mis-
leading article about the recent complaint’. It went on: ‘The paper now gives as its
explanation the exigencies of space changing from week to week. The Press Council
regrets it has needed so much effort to get this explanation. It deplores the offensive
manner in which the editor has treated a proper request put by the Press Council in
the interests of the Press as well as the public’ (ibid.: 47).
By the third annual report, the Press Council had settled in. Sir Linton Andrews,
the Chairman, reported: ‘Our first and second reports described the Press Council
as an experiment. It has become an institution. No one expects it to give up. After
three years of conscientious effort the Council is recognised by a large and
increasing number of people as a professional court of honour, a safeguard of press
freedom and press fairness’ (General Council of the Press, 1956: 1).
The third report, published in the mid-1950s, makes fairly depressing reading. It
seems some things never change. A long report on the difficulties between the Press
and the Royal Family ended with three suggestions:
1. An improvement in quality and supply of news be sought from the palace press secretariat.
2. Newspapers refrain from offering large sums to former palace servants for their stories.
3. Royal news should be handled with discretion at all times. (Ibid.: 13)
In Parliament in 1956, the Earl of Selborne attempted to introduce a bill to set

up a Press Authority which would supersede the Press Council and be ‘empowered
to receive complaints about the conduct of any newspaper or news agency’ (ibid.:
36). This bill sought to set up a three-strong authority, with its members nominated
by the Lord Chief Justice and the Lord President of the Court of Session, which
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would have the power to license newspapers and therefore control them. This was
roundly condemned by the Press Council, which called it misguided and reac-
tionary: ‘This measure would not defend but abolish freedom of the Press, one of
the proved historic safeguards of the British people’ (ibid.). The Council felt the
clauses were too widely drawn to be helpful and that therefore the right to appeal
was not useful: ‘The right to appeal to the High Court would be nullified because a
verdict could be reversed only if it ran contrary to clauses of the bill so general and
so far-reaching that the most outrageous decisions might be held to be justified
under their authority’ (ibid.).
A veto proposed by the Earl of Selborne on ‘disrespect or discourtesy to the
Royal Family’ would see many of today’s newspapers in the dock for revealing the
affairs of ‘descendants of Her late majesty Queen Victoria’ and their ‘spouses’
(ibid.). The move was similar to one suggested by Sir David Calcutt in January
1993. He suggested nominations from the Lord Chancellor: three people sitting,
selected from a panel. He did not however suggest licensing newspapers (Calcutt,
1993: xii).
The 1957 Council report tells of hard times in Romford. The Romford Recorder
of 4 January carried a heading ‘MPs too kind to themselves’. The House of
Commons Committee of Privileges decided that the heading was a contempt of the
House but not of such a nature as to make it necessary to take further action. The
editor asked the Press Council to consider whether this was a danger to press
freedom. The Press Council felt the House’s ‘leniency’ explained the editor’s concern
that he had not been given a fair hearing but they felt his treatment was not unfair
(General Council of the Press 1957: 33).
Mr George Murray took over the chairmanship of the Council following the res-
ignation of Sir Linton Andrews in April 1959. During this period several matters
had been vexing the Press. Contempt of court had become a serious issue, with a
number of papers running into difficulties with the courts. There was also concern
about the right to be admitted to the meetings of public bodies. The 1959 printing
dispute had led many local authorities to exclude journalists from meetings. A
young and enthusiastic MP called Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative member for
Finchley, won a good place in the private member’s bill ballot and moved the second
reading of the Public Bodies (Admission of the Press to Meetings) Bill in February
1960. Henry Brooke, the Minister for Housing and Local Government, made it
clear that he would not be content until all local authorities gave full facilities to the
press and the bill passed into law in June 1961.
The 1960s started with a black year for the media. First the Empire News was
absorbed into the News of the World in 1960, despite having a circulation of
2,100,000. It was closely followed by the News Chronicle, the Star, the Sunday Graphic
and the Sunday Dispatch. The Sunday Telegraph was launched in February 1961.
Further afield, the recently formed International Federation of Journalists agreed
a Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists at its World Congress in
Bordeaux in 1954.
Despite needing to deal only with core issues in order to avoid upsetting any
national sensibilities, this code covered much the same ground as the 18-year-old
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NUJ code. In eight short clauses, the journalists of the world agreed that journalists
should:
respect the truth and for the right of the public to truth;
protect the freedom of the press;
not suppress essential information or falsify documents;
use only fair methods to obtain news, photographs and documents;
rectify harmfully inaccurate material;
observe professional secrecy regarding the source of information obtained in confidence;
See as grave professional offences the following: – plagiarism; malicious misrepresentation;
calumny, slander, libel, unfounded accusations; the acceptance of a bribe.
(http://www.ifj.org/default.asp?Issue=ETHICS&Language=EN with 1986 amendments)
Another commission
In 1961, a second commission was set up. This was

to examine the economic and financial factors affecting the production and sale of newspapers,
magazines and periodicals in the United Kingdom, including:
(a) Manufacturing, printing, distribution and other costs;
(b) The efficiency of production; and
(c) Advertising and other revenue, including any revenue derived from interests in television;
to consider whether these factors tend to diminish diversity of ownership and control or the
number and variety of such publications having regard to the importance, in the public interest, of
the accurate presentation of news and the free expression of opinion. (Royal Commission on the
Press 1962: 9)
The Commission was chaired by Baron Shawcross and it came to the conclusion
that there was no acceptable legislative or fiscal method of controlling the economic
forces to ensure diversification of newspapers. It also, in passing, pointed out that
the General Council still had no lay element. It was critical of the industry’s poor
response to the recommendations of the 1947–49 Commission: ‘Had they been
carried out much of our own inquiry might have been unnecessary . . .’ (ibid.: 101).
It went on to say that while it agreed with the previous commission that ‘there are
important advantages in a body of this kind resting upon a voluntary basis and
deriving its authority not from statute but from the Press itself’, it felt that if the
Council did not gain sufficient authority from the Press, then the case for a statu-
tory body was a clear one (ibid.: 102).
The Commission recommended that all parties reconsider the recommendations
of the 1947–49 Commission urgently and reconfigure its constitution (ibid.: 117).
The Commission said that: ‘We recommend that the government should specify a
time limit after which legislation would be introduced for the establishment of such
a body (an authoritative general council with a lay element as recommended in 1949)
if in the meantime it had not been set up voluntarily’ (ibid.). The Commission also
recommended that the General Council should act as ‘a tribunal to hear complaints
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from journalists or editors about pressure from advertisers’ (ibid.: 102). It suggested
that it might be possible to extend this to complaints from editors and journalists
who had been improperly obliged by their employers or superiors to suppress
opinion, distort the truth or otherwise engage in unprofessional conduct (ibid.).
At the end of the day, very few of the Commission’s recommendations were acted
upon. The General Council changed its name to the Press Council in 1963 and
allowed the appointment of five lay members out of twenty-five. Mr George Murray
gave up the chairmanship and the first lay chairman was elected to serve from
January 1964, together with the new lay members. Membership was now structured
as follows: independent Chairman (Rt Hon The Lord Devlin PC); five representa-
tives from the NPA, three from the NS, one each from the SDNS and the SNPA, two
each from the PPA and the GBNE, four from the NUJ, two from the IoJ and five lay
members.
The year 1966 was a busy one for the Press Council with the ‘Moors murders’
trial. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were both found guilty and sentenced to life
imprisonment for murder. The chief witness for the prosecution said he had been in
receipt of weekly payments from a newspaper under a contract to provide infor-
mation. The judge, Mr Justice Fenton Atkinson, said in summing up that he did not
think that the evidence had been substantially affected, but asked the then Attorney
General, Sir Elwyn Jones (later Lord Elwyn-Jones), to consider the matter. He
decided there was no evidence that any testimony was affected and that he would
proceed no further. The Press Council however decided to issue a declaration of
principle:
1. No payment or offer of payment should be made by a newspaper to any person known or
reasonably expected to be a witness in criminal proceedings already begun in exchange for any
story or information in connection with the proceedings until they have been concluded.
2. No witness in committal proceedings should be questioned on behalf of any newspaper about
the subject matter of his evidence until the trial is concluded.
3. No payment should be made for feature articles to persons engaged in crime or other notorious
misbehaviour where the public interest does not warrant it; as the Council has previously
declared, it deplores publication of personal articles of an unsavoury nature by persons who
have been concerned in criminal acts or vicious conduct.
In making this declaration the Press Council acknowledges the wide support given by editors to the
broad principles set out.
The Council does not intend that the principles enunciated shall preclude reasonable
contemporaneous inquiries in relation to commission of crime when these are carried out with due
regard to the administration of justice. There may be occasions on which the activities of
newspapers are affected by over-riding questions of public interest, such as the exposure of wrong-
doing.
No code can cover every case. Satisfactory observance of the principles must depend upon the
discretion and sense of responsibility of editors and newspaper proprietors. (Press Council 1967: 9)
The Press Council decided to set up a complaints committee during this period.
In the summer of 1967 the Press Council moved headquarters from Legatee House
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to 6 Salisbury Square, just five doors up from its present location at number 1,
although it moved to 81 Farringdon Street in between.
The year 1967 saw a lot of parliamentary activity. Concerns over the commercial
future of Fleet Street were raised in both Houses over the Economist Intelligence
Unit report (Press Council 1967: 138), commissioned by the Joint Board of the
Newspaper Industry. This report had predicted the failure of four national news-
papers by 1970 if nothing was done. A huge row broke out in Parliament during
February 1967 over the Daily Express’s alleged breach of a D-Notice. The editor of
the Daily Mirror, Mr Lee Howard, resigned from the D-notice committee over the
issue. This was also the year that introduced the Criminal Justice Act, which limits
what reporters may write about committal proceedings. This was opposed fairly
strongly by the press at the time although the then Home Secretary, the Rt Hon Roy
Jenkins, reminded the House that the Tucker Committee, which had been set up by
him to consider restrictions on the reporting of committal proceedings, had rec-
ommended no reporting at all.
A select committee report in 1968 recommended the rescinding of all resolutions
prohibiting the reporting of parliamentary procedures, technically still illegal. Many
resolutions had been passed by the House of Commons attempting to prevent pub-
lication of reports such as one in 1729 ‘to the effect that it was a violation of the
house’s privileges to publish reports of its proceedings and “that in future the
offenders would be punished with the utmost severity” ’ (Pendleton 1890: 34).
Pendleton goes on to give some superb descriptions of the work of pioneer parlia-
mentary reporters such as Edward Cave and Dr Johnson who were obliged to write
their reports from memory and often used various subterfuges such as not pub-
lishing the full names of speakers or ‘publishing them in his magazine as “An
appendix to Captain Lemuel Gulliver’s Account of the Famous Empire of Lilliput
under the heading “Debates in the Senate of Lilliput” ’ (ibid.: 37).
Colonel Willie C. Clissitt OBE handed over the secretaryship of the Press Council
to Noel S. Paul, a former features editor on the Liverpool Daily Post in 1968 while
Lord Devlin handed over the chairmanship to Rt Hon The Lord Pearce in
September 1969. Back in Parliament, the Freedom of Publication (Protection) Bill
was lost for the fourth time at its April 1970 revival by Mr Jasper More, MP for
Ludlow.
In 1972, the government set up the Privacy Committee under the chairmanship
of Kenneth Younger. This thoroughly investigated the desirability of introducing
legislation on privacy but, on a majority decision, recommended against adding to
existing laws. The Committee did, however, recommend that as far as technological
surveillance devices were concerned, these should be generally restricted, such
restrictions applying equally to the press and general citizens. The Committee also
recommended a number of changes to the Press Council. It wanted the Council to
increase its lay membership to half and introduce an independent element into the
method of appointment of lay members. It felt it should do this at an early date. It
also suggested that the Council should codify its declarations on privacy. The
Committee also urged newspapers to give adjudications similar prominence as that
given to the original article (Committee on Privacy 1972: 13). The Press Council
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decided in 1972 to double the number of lay members but allowed the other rec-
ommendations to lie on the table.
More changes at the Press Council
In 1973, The Press Council changed its constitution again. This time, a three-person
body called the Press Council Appointments Commission, chaired by Lord
Redcliffe-Maud, was set up to appoint lay members. The Council was now thirty-
strong with ten lay members. The Complaints Committee was made up of six lay
members and six professional members and was chaired by the chairman of the
Press Council, now Lord Shawcross who replaced Lord Pearce in 1974.
In 1974, yet another Royal Commission was set up with Sir Morris Finer as
chairman. Sir Morris Finer died in 1975 and was replaced by Professor Oliver
McGregor (who as Lord McGregor of Durris became the first chairman of the Press
Complaints Commission in 1991). The Commission investigated a wide range of
press topics, but devoted a whole chapter (20) to the Press Council. It rejected the
notion of a communications council set up under statute (Royal Commission on the
Press 1977: 96). A communications council would have combined press and broad-
cast whilst the statutory suggestion would have removed the element of
self-regulation.
The Commission reiterated its belief in self-regulation but again made it clear
that the Press Council had to be seen to be working if legislation was to be avoided.
It said that it believed the Press Council should show a determination to be inde-
pendent of the Press: ‘The public will not believe that a council dominated by
journalists and others from the Press can keep an effective watch on the standards
of the Press or can deal satisfactorily with complaints by citizens’ (ibid.). It con-
tinued the attack on the problem of too few lay members on the Council. It
expressed its concern about the large number of criticisms it had received about the
Council’s self-satisfaction over the Press’s alleged less than rigorous standards. It
said that the Press Council’s rejection of those criticisms and opposition to
extending lay membership on the grounds that it was a voluntary, self-regulating
body on which lay membership was unsuitable was inconsistent.
The Commission reported in 1977 with the following list of recommendations:
1. There should be equal numbers of lay to professional members on the Council with an
independent chair.
2. The Appointments Commission chair should be the Press Council chairman.
3. There should be a right of reply.
4. There should be a fast-track conciliation service.
5. The legal waiver should be reconsidered.
6. There should be a code of conduct.
7. The Press Council should be provided with sufficient funds to advertise its services.
8. The publishers’ organisations should be approached to agree that adjudications should be
published in full on the front pages with a similar prominence to the original story.
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More changes at the Press Council 219
9. The Press Council should undertake a wider review of the record of publications of journalists
concerned in complaints.
10. The Press Council should undertake to investigate and monitor the press more often on its
own initiative.
11. The Commission expressed its concern that there was no right of complaint over inaccuracy
and that often opinion was based on inaccurate fact. It recommended that contentious opinion
on the basis of fact should be grounds for censure. (Ibid.: 236)
In 1976 the Press Council decided to codify its adjudications to form a basis of
precedence to their work on complaints and codes of practice.
The year also saw the launch of a new NUJ code of conduct. The final draft of
the modern NUJ was produced at a meeting of the committee in August 1974. This
modern code split ethical matters from working practices and the names Code of
Professional Conduct and Working Practices were used to separate out the two
issues. This new code, based on the International Federation of Journalists’ code and
a new code that had been developed for the proposed merger between the NUJ and
the Institute of Journalists, was presented by the union’s education officer, George
Viner, as a whole document and was presumably discussed and finalised at that
meeting.
At this stage it had ten clauses but there were several matters still outstanding
that the committee felt should be discussed and the code was finally accepted with
eleven clauses at the union’s Annual Delegate Meeting 1975 in Cardiff.
The new code still mentioned little about privacy, or children. Concern about
material gathered or published about vulnerable groups was an ethical dilemma that
had still to seriously concern those involved in writing codes, but discrimination was
now firmly on the agenda with a clause outlawing the originating of material which
encouraged ‘discrimination in the grounds of race, colour, creed, sex or sexual
relations’. Disability was added to the list in the mid-eighties.
Intrusion into private lives was still giving the public and journalists alike con-
siderable cause for concern. The growth of broadcasting as an alerting medium able
to bring people the latest news had seen newspapers move more into either analysis
or celebrity. The social changes that swept the country in the 1960s helped with this
growth so that by the end of the period and into the 1970s there was a substantial
appetite for news of the private lives of the rich and famous.
Codes up until then had talked about not causing pain or humiliation to the inno-
cent or the bereaved, but not specifically about privacy. This was not the first time
concerns about intrusion had been mentioned. The Committee on the Law of
Defamation under the chairmanship of Lord Porter in the 1940s had heard evidence
that representatives of certain organs of the press had been intruding ‘upon those
who have suffered bereavement, or cross-questioning those who are related to or
otherwise incidentally connected with persons who have committed crimes or
attained notoriety and of publishing in sensational form details of the private lives
and affairs of such persons’ (cited in Committee on Privacy 1972: 41). However, the
concerns had, by the end of the 1960s, grown to involve widespread intrusion into
the private lives of the celebrated.
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There was something of a sea-change at the Press Council in the year 1977, partly
at least because of the Royal Commission. Kenneth Morgan, who as NUJ General
Secretary had often attended Press Council meetings, became Deputy Director. The
Secretary became the Director and in October 1978, Patrick Neill QC took over as
chairman from Lord Shawcross. In May 1980, the NUJ quit the Press Council in
exasperation over its refusal to consider many of the reforms suggested by the
1974–77 Commission, although the Press Council had increased its membership to
thirty-six to allow equal lay representation. By now, Kenneth Morgan had taken
over the directorship of the Press Council, a position he was to hold until is closure.
He was also to become the first Director of the Press Complaints Commission. The
Rt Hon Sir Zelman Cowen was appointed chairman in 1984; he handed over to
Louis Blom-Cooper who took up the reins in January 1989.
All change
By the end of the 1980s, as Fleet Street publishers moved out to Wapping and
Canary Wharf, criticism of press behaviour continued to mount and the Press
Council was increasingly seen as weak and ineffectual. Its new chairman, Louis
Blom-Cooper, set up a review body to consider the way forward. This rec-
ommended a new code of conduct (the Council had not had one until then) and the
addition of a hotline for complaints. It had become clear, even to the most stubborn
editor, that the writing was on the wall as far as press behaviour was concerned.
The editors met in November 1989 at the Newspaper Publishers’ Association in
London and issued a communiqué which accepted the need to improve methods of
self-regulation. They declared their unanimous commitment to the Press Council
and to a five-point common code of practice (Press Council, 1989: 340). One of the
main reasons for this was the avoidance of legal control rather than any real attempt
to clean up their act. Nevertheless, a committee was set up under the chairmanship
of Andreas Whittam-Smith, then editor of The Independent, which drew up a new
code of conduct (the Editors’ Code of Conduct). Many of the papers backed up the
new code by appointing ombudsmen to ‘represent their readers’ to the paper. The
Sun was one of several which made considerable play of appointing a ‘readers’
champion’ to support the new Code of Conduct. By 1989, some of the Press Council
reforms had been put in place, including a new code of practice, which was adopted
by the Council on 13 March, 1990. These improvements were an acceptable way
forward for the NUJ, which rejoined the council in 1990 after gaining the approval
of its Annual Delegate Meeting.
The government had also been concerned by the growing public anger about an
over-sensationalist press and in 1989 had set up a committee under the chairman-
ship of David Calcutt QC (now Sir David) to investigate privacy and related
matters. This concentrated entirely on the Press. Broadcasting already had the BCC
with its statutory duty to investigate privacy invasions.
Although the committee came up with helpful suggestions on dealing with
minors in criminal cases, its recommendations on privacy were less welcome to the
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All change 221
industry (Committee on Privacy and Related Matters, 1990). These were not a sur-
prise, however, coming on the top of several royal scandal stories and the Gorden
Kaye incident. The actor Gorden Kaye was seriously ill in hospital having suffered
a severe head injury during a hurricane in London. On 13 February 1990 Sunday
Sport reporters Gazza Thompson and Ray Levine managed to get into his hospital
room, photographed him and even tried to interview him. The subsequent report
provoked howls of protest around the country, which was not helped by the insen-
sitive attitude of Sunday Sport editor Drew Robertson, who failed to accept a
reprimand from the Press Council and printed a huge article condemning the Press
Council as a waste of space in robust and, many felt, unnecessarily crude language.
He was later sacked by the board of directors which was surprisingly sensitive to the
dangers of the situation. This incident had almost led to immediate legislation and
so it was no surprise when Calcutt published strong recommendations on privacy
and called for the scrapping of the Press Council and its replacement with a Press
Complaints Commission (ibid.). There was some bitterness in the Press Council
about this move as most of the proposals for a PCC were included in the Press
Council’s own review body recommendations. The Press Council also felt that
Calcutt’s recommendation to remove the duty to defend press freedom from the
PCC was ill-advised. Its other concerns about the proposed body were:
• It would not take third-party complaints;
• It was not allowed to investigate of its own cognizance; and
• It was lacking in lay membership.
Although the new body was opposed by the Press Council, employer groups had
already set up the Press Standards Board of Finance (Pressbof) to fund the develop-
ment of a PCC with a new code of practice. Its constituent members were: the NPA,
the NS, the PPA, the SNPA and the SDNS. The Press Council voted not to give up
its jurisdiction, supported mainly by lay members and the trade unions. However,
because of Pressbof, the new Press Complaints Committee was the body with the
funding and the Press Council was forced, reluctantly, to close in December 1990,
its officers and offices being taken over by the Press Complaints Commission.
Calcutt had recommended that this should be the industry’s last chance to be self-
regulatory and warned that if the media continued to misbehave, then statutory
regulation should be introduced. He suggested a probationary period of one year
but no criteria were laid down about good behaviour.
The new PCC started work in January 1991. It was dominated by industry rep-
resentatives, mostly editors, which did its new reputation little good. The Calcutt
Committee had recommended removing the right of the constituent bodies to elect
representatives in order that the Commission be seen as truly independent of the
industry. It also recommended that the Appointments Commission should have
‘explicit freedom to appoint whoever it considers best qualified’ (ibid.: 69). The
Press Complaints Commission’s constitution decided on a slightly larger committee
than envisaged by Calcutt – sixteen rather than twelve – and also decided that the
press representatives should be editors or senior journalists. To date, no press rep-
resentative has ever been anything other than an editor. This was outside the spirit
JOUR_C13.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 222
of Calcutt and angered many within the journalists’ unions who saw this as a way
of excluding trade union involvement with the new body. This is one reason for the
NUJ’s antipathy to the PCC.
Even the five lay members appointed to the first council were not seen as totally
independent and were labelled ‘toffs and profs’ by Paul Foot. The Commission was
chaired by Lord McGregor and he brought with him some of his team from the
Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). They had considerable experience of
dealing with complaints but things did not always run smoothly with the change-
over to a new system. By the end of the year, the Director, Ken Morgan, the former
Director at the Press Council, had left and his place had been taken by Mark
Bolland from the ASA. There seems little doubt that Morgan was forced out, but
neither side was prepared to talk about why.
The PCC’s refusal, backed by Calcutt, to base its work on the precept of
defending the freedom of the press was seen by many as unfortunate. How, they
argued, could a journalist’s conduct be measured if the freedom of the press was not
seen as one of the goalposts? Surely the only defence for invasions of privacy was
the freedom of the press to write of matters in the public interest? Nevertheless, a
code of practice was drafted under the chairmanship of Patsie Chapman, then editor
of the News of the World. This was to prove a later source of embarrassment to the
Commission when the first complaint to be dealt with was against the News of the
World. This code of practice did contain (as it obviously had to) a public interest
defence against issues of intrusion and invasion. With royal scandal following royal
scandal through the early 1990s, as well as a series of indiscretions by politicians,
the debate about press excesses continued. The election of 1992 must have its part
to play in explaining why these did not spark the introduction of laws on privacy.
Despite the claimed expertise of the former ASA staff, who spent some time
rebuilding the complaints systems used by the PCC to follow the model used by the
ASA, the PCC quickly showed itself to be ineffectual and self-serving and a few
spectacular invasions of privacy by the tabloids led to further calls for legislation.
Two major royal stories of 1992 in particular explain why David Calcutt was asked
to prepare a second report on the press, and in particular the effectiveness of the
Press Complaints Commission.
The first, the taking of photographs of the topless Duchess of York while on a
private holiday, shortly after her formal separation from the Duke, showed how
the public could both condemn and be titillated, self-righteous and hypocritical.
Amidst widespread condemnation of the pictures, published first by the Daily
Mirror (on a Wednesday) and then by The Observer, both papers sold out. The
Daily Mirror went so far as to produce a new run on Thursday morning for the
City. These also sold out. Stung by the attacks these publications drew, the papers
were far more circumspect when tapes purporting to be of a telephone conversa-
tion between the Prince of Wales and Lady Camilla Parker Bowles were made
available to the media after publication in an Australian newspaper (owned by
Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News International, publisher of The Sun, Today
and The Times). Most papers became terribly self-righteous about the story, con-
demning it on the one hand as an invasion of privacy while, on the other, giving
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All change 223
a brief synopsis of its content: enough to tantalise without explaining what was in
the conversation. Only the Sport, The Observer and a handful of provincial papers
published the conversation in full, exposing it as childish and smutty. The Press
Association (PA) refused to circulate the transcript generally and sent it only to
papers that specifically asked for it. Most papers ignored the obvious story about
where such a tape had come from in order to maximise the sordid nature of the
conversation. In this incident, as in the abdication story of the 1930s, limited pub-
lication gave the story more impact than full publication would have done, with
the added benefit of allowing the media to pretend that they were behaving respon-
sibly.
The Daily Mirror followed a similar line when Budget papers were leaked to it in
November 1996. Refusing to run the story, it returned the papers to the Chancellor
amidst much smugness about its responsible stand. The next day it was stung badly
enough by criticism of its news sense to crow that it had not run the leaked docu-
ments because they were not interesting enough. This was probably true. The story
about handing back leaked documents was better than publishing the less than dam-
aging leaks.
In its October 1992 report, the PCC spelt out some of the reasons why it felt it
had been effective and was becoming more so. It contended that there was a lack of
statistical evidence of serious criticism from readers. It also claimed that there was
a scarcity of complaints about intrusion into privacy and few about harassment. The
PCC submitted a 76-page dossier to Sir David Calcutt, including detailed statistics,
to support its view that ‘there is no case for statutory intervention in one of our
greatest liberties – the freedom of the press’ (PCC, Report No. 14, 1992: 5). This
presented an interesting can of worms that Calcutt spent some time opening. The
original Calcutt report had quite specifically denied the Press Complaints
Commission the chance to champion press freedom and indeed this was one of the
reasons why many people opposed the changeover from Press Council to Press
Complaints Commission. Yet in April 1991, by special resolution, the Press
Complaints Commission added a clause to its objectives about press freedom. By
June 1991, the Commission was including as its duties: ‘The duty to promote gen-
erally established freedoms including freedom of expression and the public’s right
to know, and the defence of the Press against improper pressure from the
Government and elsewhere’ (PCC, Report No. 1, 1991: 4). Calcutt records in his
report that Lord McGregor had assured him ‘that it was not part of the
Commission’s responsibility to be a campaigning body’ (Calcutt 1993: 16). This
was followed by an article in UK Press Gazette headed: ‘Calcutt test passed – now
for Press Freedom’ (ibid.), which contained an interview with Lord McGregor,
allegedly taking a contrary view. Calcutt records his subsequent conversation with
McGregor in which McGregor claims he was misrepresented in his views (Calcutt
1993: 17).
‘Calcutt 2’, as the new review was quickly called, sparked the PCC into a short
burst of activity and the following month’s report also contained an editorial,
spelling out how the PCC was making its existence more widely known. It was cer-
tainly possible to complain that the Commission had not been good at making itself
JOUR_C13.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 224
better known to the public. It now announced that it had produced a ‘How to
Complain’ leaflet and information sheets about the Commission. One thousand
copies of a small poster had been mailed to libraries, and newspapers were donating
advertising space for the PCC. The Commission announced its intention to be listed
in all the main UK telephone directories from the following year, something it does
as a matter of course now. The Commission boasted about presentations explaining
its role to MPs, editors, students and consumer groups, although anecdotal evidence
suggests these were not as widely available as the PCC would like us to believe.
Sir David Calcutt was unconvinced by the Commission’s case and reported in
January 1993 that in his view the PCC should be wound up and a statutory body
put in its place. He recommended that the only way forward was a statutory Press
Complaints Tribunal, which would be able to carry out its own inquiries, draw up
a code of practice, impose fines and costs, and award compensation, and to require
a response to its inquiries. He also recommended criminal legislation for physical
intrusion and a new tort of infringement of privacy, and called for tighter restric-
tions on the reporting of court cases involving minors (Calcutt 1993).
Shortly after the report was delivered, the Secretary of State for National
Heritage, David Mellor, who had already warned the press about drinking in the
‘last chance saloon’, found he had been drinking there himself and he was forced to
resign as allegation after allegation made his position untenable. This underlined the
high-risk nature of being the Secretary of State responsible for trying to rein in the
media. The National Heritage Committee on Privacy and Media Intrusion was set
up in July 1992, running parallel with Calcutt’s, and returned its conclusions to the
House in March 1993. It was chaired by Mr Gerald Kaufman and came up with a
number of recommendations concerning the future of the PCC and the basis of press
self-regulation. It said that the approach should remain voluntary and that Calcutt
was wrong to seek statutory control at this stage, but that he was right to want to
ditch the PCC. The National Heritage Committee made forty-three recommen-
dations including the following:
• Editors’ and journalists’ contracts of employment should include reference to the code of
practice.
• Newspapers should appoint readers’ representatives.
• A Protection of Privacy Bill should be introduced.
• A Press Commission should replace the PCC, with the power to impose fines and order
compensation.
• A statutory Press Ombudsman should be appointed, with power to supervise the wording and
position of retractions and apologies and impose fines and order the payment of compensation.
(National Heritage Committee 1993: xxiii–xxvi)
The government had promised in 1990 to bring in new laws on privacy, as rec-
ommended by Calcutt, but by the 1992 election these had still not been introduced.
The government issued a consultation paper on the infringement of privacy at the
end of July 1993 which had some fairly strong things to say about the issue but very
little about the PCC. Lord Mackay, the Lord Chancellor, launched the paper with
the view that it was time for a new right of privacy. This was supported by the
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All change 225
National Heritage Committee. It was opposed, though, by various editors and was
strongly attacked in the media. Surprisingly, the government announced an indefi-
nite delay in the publication of the promised White Paper on privacy in March
1994.
The National Heritage Committee was not the only one trying to get involved
with media ethics in 1993. The European Commission had also been becoming
more concerned over the last few years and wanted to have its own code of ethics
developed.
The PCC has spent most of its life trying frantically to change its processes in a
bid to keep up with a constant stream of criticism. The ink on both the ‘Calcutt 2’
report and the National Heritage Committee report was barely dry before Pressbof
issued a statement entitled Strengthening Self-regulation on 4 May 1993. This
announced a series of measures designed to ‘reinforce public confidence’ in the auth-
ority of the PCC. The independent PCC quickly welcomed Pressbof’s statement.
First it agreed to change the membership: ‘Since it was set up in January 1991, the
Commission have operated with complete independence. However, to meet any
misconceptions regarding their independent status, the membership of the
Commission will be altered to ensure a lay majority consisting of an independent
chairman, eight non-press members and seven editors’ (PCC, Report No. 17, 1993:
5).
Secondly, the PCC was offered, and agreed to accept, the final ratification of the
Code of Practice. Despite consistently claiming that one of the strengths of the PCC
was that the Code was drawn up for editors, by editors, the PCC now had the final
say in ratifying the Code. By the end of 1998, the Commission had yet to use its
power to veto a change publicly, but with substantial changes made in 1997, fol-
lowing the death of the Princess of Wales, it could be assumed that planned changes
in the Code were notified to the Commission chairman before publication to ensure
that the Commission would not be put in the embarrassing position of having to
refuse publicly to ratify a Code change. Lord Wakeham had made it plain early on
in his new role as chairman that he was unhappy with some elements of the Code
and that a major rewrite was both needed and planned. His chance came with the
death of the Princess of Wales and a new Code was introduced in January 1998.
The next change was to set up a helpline for members of the public who felt the
Code was about to be breached with regard to their affairs.
The Commission also boasted about the lengths it had gone to publicise itself. It
claimed that £250,000 worth of advertising space had been donated and that
130,000 copies of the ‘how to complain’ leaflet had been distributed in the previous
twelve months. In addition, the Code committee had tinkered almost endlessly with
its definition of private property (June 1993, October 1993, February 1995). It had
also taken to doing its own investigating and commenting on matters, although it
was difficult to tell whether this was a deliberate policy or merely Lord McGregor
taking any opportunity to gain publicity to show the effectiveness of the
Commission.
Towards the end of 1994 the industry tired of McGregor’s eccentric approach.
When the Commission should have been calming public outrage under the guise of
JOUR_C13.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 226
sober reflection and adjudication of the issue, McGregor was on the front steps of
Salisbury Square addressing the TV cameras about the press ‘dabbling their fingers
in the stuff of other people’s souls’. When it could and should have spoken out,
McGregor was nowhere to be found. Those close to him during this time believe his
illness had started to affect his judgement. He died in November 1997.
A carefully concealed, collective sigh of relief was uttered when McGregor’s
period of office ended in December 1994 and he was replaced by Lord Wakeham,
the former Chief Whip for Margaret Thatcher, Secretary of State for Energy and
Leader of first the Commons and then the Lords. He was undoubtedly seen by both
government and the industry as a safe pair of hands to guide the PCC on the
tightrope between the government and the press with diplomacy and statesmanship.
Acknowledged by all as a smooth and talented political operator, he was welcomed
by an industry well aware that failure to walk this tightrope effectively would be
certain to force the government, albeit unwillingly, to introduce press legislation.
Lord Wakeham set about a major, if subdued, shake-up of the PCC. He started
by replacing some of the members of the Commission. His intention was to ensure
that a majority of individual members of the PCC were independent of the Press and
that the whole of the Commission operated as such. He also reformed the method
of appointing PCC members. The PCC’s articles of association had been changed in
1993 to reflect the concerns of Sir David Calcutt over appointments to the
Commission. Unfortunately, the PCC had been operating in breach of those new
articles ever since. As Lord Wakeham pointed out to the Secretary of State at the
Department of National Heritage on 19 June 1995: ‘If this is not open and inde-
pendent, doubt will naturally be cast on the integrity of the appointments. I was
therefore deeply dismayed to discover that the PCC’s appointments system was
operating in breach of its own articles of association’ (Department of National
Heritage 1995: 26). He immediately dealt with this.
Until Wakeham, the Appointments Commission had been appointed by Pressbof.
Wakeham changed this so that he now appointed the Public Nominees – the three
independent members of the Appointments Commission. He was the fourth com-
missioner and the chairman of Pressbof was the fifth. Several changes of Secretary
of State at the Department of National Heritage had delayed the government’s
response to the National Heritage Committee’s report but finally the Rt Hon
Virginia Bottomley JP MP stayed long enough to produce, on 17 July 1995, a doc-
ument setting out the government’s policy on privacy. This made it clear that
although the government had no objection to criminal legislation on invasions of
privacy in principle, it felt it had ‘not been able to construct legislation which is . . .
workable in practice. Accordingly it has no immediate plans to legislate in this area’
(ibid.: 9). Intriguingly, despite this inability to construct legislation in the criminal
area, the consultative document had been able to include a hypothetical civil
remedy, including a definition of privacy. In a far from subtly worded hint as to
what awaited the industry, should it drag its heels over change, the report made the
industry an offer it could not refuse: ‘The industry has indicated that it wishes to
adopt a tighter form of words on privacy in its code. The government welcomes this.
It believes it may be helpful for the industry, in refining its code, to see what a hypo-
JOUR_C13.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 227
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thetical civil remedy might look like. Annex B accordingly sets out how legislation
might have been framed . . .’ (ibid.: 16).
The government’s response to the National Heritage Committee’s report deals
with four main issues:
• Should regulation be voluntary or statutory? The government is in no doubt: ‘It
believes that, in principle, industry self-regulation is to be much preferred.’ It
also feels that this applies to the National Heritage Committee’s plan for an
ombudsman (ibid.: 5).
• Should criminal law be introduced? The government says it still believes in self-
regulation and, in any case, legislation is too difficult to construct (ibid.: 13).
• Should a civil remedy be provided with a statutory right of privacy? The
government feels not. Self-regulation should continue (ibid.: 16).
• Has the PCC gone far enough with its reforms? Certainly not. The government
‘looks to it [the PCC] to make further improvements to ensure self-regulation
can be made to work and to carry public confidence’ (ibid.: 8).
The government was very clear about what it expected Lord Wakeham to deliver
with his cleaned-up PCC. Chapter 2 of the government’s response laid out a number
of suggestions. Some of these had already been put into operation by Wakeham, but
others were still undone.
Appointments: The government had welcomed Wakeham’s change to the appoint-

ment system, allowing wider lay membership of the Appointments Committee and
the move to a lay majority on the Commission itself.
Press hotline: This would allow editors to discuss sensitive stories with the PCC
before publication. At the time of the government’s response to the Heritage
Committee this was still planned, but now seems to be working, at least on an ad
hoc basis. Lord McGregor had opposed this as smacking of pre-publication censor-
ship.
Improvements to procedures: The government welcomed Wakeham’s plan to accept
and investigate appropriate third-party complaints. It also called for the adoption of
citizen’s-charter style performance targets and the publication of fuller summaries
of adjudications.
Code written into contracts: Wakeham reported that the code was gradually being
incorporated into editors’ contracts of employment and those of some journalists.
This was welcomed by the government but they awaited further evidence of disci-
plinary sanctions. ‘Sanctions are a crucial issue. . . . Should not proprietors consider
dismissal in appropriate cases, and the commission make recommendations to that
effect?’ (ibid.: 33).
Compensation fund: The government wished to see compensation paid to those
whose privacy was unjustifiably infringed by the press. Wakeham did not mention
this in his letter to the Secretary of State, Virginia Bottomley. Her letter said: ‘The gov-
ernment is also attracted to the idea of a compensation fund. . . . It would represent a
JOUR_C13.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 228
form of insurance – there are no doubt ways in which contributions of the different
papers could be equitably assessed’ (ibid.). Newspapers disagreed. How, argued many
proprietors, could a system be set up to build a compensation fund with contributions
from papers as diverse as the Stornaway Gazette and the News of the World? How
could you compare the extent of the invasion, the intent of the paper, and the damage
done?
Contents of the Code of Practice: While accepting that Lord Wakeham was
attempting to develop the Code, the government made it clear that a number of
specific improvements were still needed. There was also a need to involve the public
and the PCC in the framing of a code that at that time was wholly the preserve of
the Code Committee – a body set up by Pressbof under the chairmanship of Sir
David English of Associated News. This could have caused the PCC some problems.
They made considerable play of the fact that the Code was drawn up by the
industry. Although the Code Committee is, to all intents and purpose, self-selecting
from amongst editors and therefore can be considered flawed, it does give the PCC
a chance to stand away from the Code and say that it is not the PCC Code, but the
Editors’ Code. The PCC believes this ties the editors into the system much more
closely.
In his introduction to the PCC’s Annual Report of 1995 Lord Wakeham talks
about what he sees as a momentous year for the PCC: ‘We were finally taken off
probation and given the green light to get on with working to provide a first-class
complaints handling service to the public’ (PCC 1995: 2). He explains that three
things happened to convince him that self-regulation is the way forward:
1. The Commission renewed its independence from the industry that pays for it.
2. The PCC became far more consistent in its application of the Code of Practice.
3. There has been growing confidence in the system by the public. (PCC 1995: 2)
Lord Wakeham pointed to an increase in complaints as evidence of rising public

confidence. The number of complaints rose in 1995 by nearly 30 per cent on 1994
to a high of 2,508: ‘Ordinary people won’t waste time complaining to a toothless
body’ (PCC 1995: 2). The Press Council in 1995 received a record number of 1,588
complaints. Lord Wakeham was convinced the new high figure was entirely down
to confidence in the PCC rather than falling standards sparking more complaints.
Although Lord Wakeham had made sweeping changes to the PCC, he was still
fine-tuning the organisation. Mark Bolland, the youthful director who took over
from Ken Morgan in 1992, had joined the Prince of Wales’ press team and with a
new director in place, Wakeham had virtually a completely fresh team. Rumours
continued about tensions between Wakeham and Sir David English, then chair of
Pressbof’s Code of Practice Committee. This committee of editors had drawn up the
Code of Practice used by the Commission. Lord Wakeham had expressed his deter-
mination to review the Code of Conduct and the way that it was drawn up. In his
letter to the Secretary of State Wakeham made it clear he was unhappy about a
Code Committee composed solely of editors: ‘It is arguable that the committee
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responsible for the initial framing of the Code should not be composed only of
editors and convened under the aegis of Pressbof’ (Department of National Heritage
1995: 28). Wakeham had been encouraging outside organisations to express their
views on the Code of Conduct and was firm in his expressed determination only to
accept a new Code that was completely satisfactory to the Commission. Sir David,
on the other hand, while accepting that the Commission must ratify the Code, made
much of the fact that it was a committee of editors who drew up the Code: ‘The
Code is, crucially, the industry’s own Code. Although it must be ratified by the inde-
pendent PCC to take effect, it is the fact that the Code is drafted by industry
practitioners for the industry that ensures the unswerving commitment of all sectors
of the newspaper and magazine publishing sector to self-regulation’ (PCC 1995:
11). Sir David used the rest of his 1995 report to clarify the range and number of
changes the Committee had made to the Code in the previous few years. His inten-
tion was to praise the Code Committee’s flexibility, although he also succeeded in
laying bare the inadequacies of the PCC’s Code and its constant need to change in
an effort to catch up with the latest breach.
At the end of October 1996, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, then the Lord
Chancellor, announced, in reply to a question in the House of Lords, that the gov-
ernment intended publishing a consultation paper about a new law preventing the
payment or offer of payment to a witness in a trial which is pending or imminent.
Announcing the proposals and inviting comments, he condemned what he called
‘widespread and flagrant breaches’ of the PCC’s Code. The consultation document
released by the Lord Chancellor’s department explained that as many as nineteen
witnesses were believed to have accepted payments from the media in the Rosemary
West trial. ‘The existence or possibility of payment by the media does increase the
danger of a witness’s evidence being distorted. . . . The Government therefore con-
siders that legislation is needed to deal with the threat which payments to witnesses
pose to the proper administration of justice. Press self-regulation did not prevent the
payments in the West case or others’ (Lord Chancellor’s Department 1996: 6). The
consultation paper asked for comments on whether payments, offers of payment
and requests for payment should be prohibited, and on specific questions relating to:
• Whether the prohibition should take the form of a contempt of court or a criminal offence.
• Whether a risk of prejudice to the proceedings needs to be proved.
• Whether an intention to interfere with the course of justice needs to be proved.
• At what stage the prohibition should begin.
• Whether the prohibition should cease at the end of the trial.
• Whether there should be any defences. (Ibid.)
Lord Mackay was concerned that witnesses might omit something from their evi-
dence in court to leave something exclusive for a story in the media, or that
witnesses might exaggerate evidence in order to make their stories more news-
worthy. Witnesses might also become so committed to their particular accounts that
they would be unwilling to examine points put to them in court.
Even where witnesses were not swayed by contracts, Lord Mackay believed it
was likely that cross-examination would raise the existence of contracts, suggesting
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that their evidence might be flawed, sowing doubts in juries’ minds. The Lord
Chancellor said payments to witnesses risked damaging the integrity of the admin-
istration of justice. The government also noted that the PCC’s Code of Practice did
not apply to broadcasting journalists (Department of National Heritage, Press
Release, 30 October 1996).
The NUJ National Executive Council, which discussed the consultative paper at
its meeting in December 1996, agreed that there should be a strengthening of the
law and that the contempt of court restrictions should be extended to cover this
issue. The National Heritage Select Committee also agreed that there should be an
extension, although they believed there should be a new law. The Bar Council also
supported an extension of legislation on the payment of witnesses.
Several editors and the Press Complaints Commission itself opposed changes,
saying that the Code was able to deal with the problem – despite the Rosemary West
case suggesting that this was not the case. The bill was not to be, as the Labour
Party came to government in June 1997 before the bill could be made law.
A change of government
A change of government in 1997 brought some fresh views to bear. The Labour gov-
ernment made it clear from the beginning that it felt self-regulation was the right
approach and that it did not intend to introduce statutory control or privacy legis-
lation. The death of the Princess of Wales and the subsequent anger of the public over
what was, at the time, believed to be the involvement of the paparazzi gave a wobble
to self-regulation, with many people calling for a new law on privacy. The full report
on the crash, which blamed chauffeur Henri Paul for driving too fast while under the
influence of alcohol, came two years later – too late to prevent the attacks on the media.
Although the government had called for a period of ‘calm reflection’, both Media
Secretary, Chris Smith, and Prime Minister Tony Blair made it clear they did not favour
a privacy law. Earl Spencer, the Princess’s brother, delivered a stinging attack on the
tabloid press, accusing them of trying to bring down the Princess. Several newspapers
responded by vowing not to use intrusive pictures of the Princes William and Harry
and several agreed not to use paparazzo pictures at all. The Princess’s death produced
a new Code of Practice for the PCC but the other resolutions did not last long and
papers were soon printing paparazzo pictures again. The introduction of the Human
Rights Act 1998 was one of the new government’s major pieces of legislation in terms
of its effects on the media. The PCC came to a new deal with the Prince of Wales in
early 1999 about coverage of his sons, the Princes William and Harry, following the
publication of a series of intrusive pictures of them. The deal saw new guidelines issued
to the Press in return for the Royal Family being more open with the media.
One of the new government’s election pledges was a Freedom of Information Bill
and a draft was presented to Parliament in June 1999 to general condemnation as
being too weak. This was eventually enacted in 2000 and took full effect in January
2005. Within a year the government was complaining that journalists were using the
legislation so heavily that there might need to be changes to reduce access.
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A change of government 231
Lord Wakeham, who had agreed at the end of 1996 to a further period as
chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, was obliged to resign in 2002 in
order to defend his position in the Enron scandal where he was chairman of the
Audit Committee. His place was initially filled by Professor Robert Pinker but in
January 2003, Sir Christopher Meyer was appointed chair of the PCC. Sir
Christopher had been the UK ambassador in Washington and was known to be
close to the Labour government.
House of Commons privacy and media intrusion

Privacy continued to rumble on as one of the big ethical problems and the House of
Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport held hearings on Privacy
and Media Intrusion through the spring and summer of 2003. They heard evidence
from a range of sources about invasion of privacy and the behaviour of the media,
particularly the press. Ofcom was running by this time, but had not fully taken over
the reins as the Communications Act, which gives it its power, did not receive Royal
Assent until July, and Ofcom did not take over its role fully until January of 2004.
The committee came up with more than thirty recommendations, some aimed at
broadcasters and some at the press and the PCC. The most significant was the rec-
ommendation that there should be a law on privacy. This was immediately rejected
by the government, as indeed were many of the other recommendations.
The Press Complaints Commission received a number of recommendations:
• The PCC should establish procedure to allow people to refuse mediation and
go for judgment;
• Journalists should be able to refuse an unethical assignment;
• The PCC should ban payments to police officers;
• Press members of the PCC with poor record should be barred from office with
the PCC;
• The PCC should publish a league table of performance;
• There should be some form of punishment and compensation system;
• Registration fee should be linked to adverse judgments;
• There should be a front page ‘taster’ for adjudications published in newspapers;
• Press archives and libraries should be annotated as to their accuracy and
sensitivity.
The timing of the SCCMS review was good for the PCC who had only recently
appointed a new Chairman. The committee’s recommendations were also useful for
the new chairman who seized upon some of them, at least, to introduce a number
of reforms. Posts for lay members of the committee would in future be advertised
and the selection would be more open. The first such advert, inserted at the insist-
ence of Sir Christopher shortly after taking over the post of chairman, saw more
than a thousand applicants for the single post. Other adverts followed. The PCC
also decided to appoint a Charter Commisssioner and a charter compliance com-
mittee – a free-roving committee able to examine PCC decisions at will and make
recommendations. This was not an appeals body, although complainants who felt
JOUR_C13.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 232
that the PCC had breached their own rules or procedures could appeal to the charter
commissioner. The Panel and the commissioner were to report their findings at the
end of each year and would expect the Commission to respond to these. The PCC
also took to the road, visiting half a dozen provincial centres to explain their work
and to face the questioning of local people.
The timing was also good for the government who quickly made it clear that it
did not intend to introduce a new law on privacy but was able to quietly report that
it was intending to leave all the other suggested changes for the PCC to consider
with its new chairman.
Other more subtle, but perhaps more important changes started to happen at the
PCC over the next couple of years. The meaning of third-party complaints became
much more subtly refined. When the PCC first started, it had been determined not
to take third-party complaints. Several active campaigners had kept the old Press
Council very busy with their complaints. Bob Borzello, for instance, would send
several complaints a month about racist coverage in the national press. The PCC
was determined to end these: ‘it would not follow the Council’s practice of
accepting “third-party” complaints. Thus would a heavy burden be lifted. About
half the complaints dealt with by the Council were from people not directly con-
cerned’ (Shannon, 2001: 41).
This view was still going strong in 1996 when hundreds of complaints were sent
in following the Euro ’96 coverage, but ‘both the Code Committee and the PCC per-
sisted in the view that good procedure consists in not as a rule admitting third-party
complaints, and that good policy consists in leaving collective racism outside the
Code in a category of offences to taste and decency’ (Shannon 2001: 257).
It is not clear precisely what caused the PCC to change its mind, but the definition
of third-party complaints has changed significantly since Sir Christopher took over
the chair with the PCC confirming in June 2006 that ‘In cases that relate to named
individuals, the PCC will generally require the co-operation of those individuals
before investigating a complaint. This either will mean the complaint coming from
the individual his or herself, or their authorisation for another person to complain
on their behalf. In cases that relate to points of general fact – where there are no
obvious first parties cited in the article, who might complain – the Commission will
generally accept complaints under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code from any con-
cerned reader.’
The PCC also made some additions to the PCC Code. Payments to witnesses
were generally outlawed in 2004 and transgendered people were added to the list of
the vulnerable in 2005. More guidance was now generally being offered. A ‘Code
book’ was written by Ian Beale, a former editor and secretary of the Editor’s Code
Committee and this was published by the PCC in February 2005. In 2006, a new
clause was added warning newspapers to take particular care in reporting stories on
suicide. This had been a growing area of concern over the past few years with some
influential research showing that there could well be a link between suicides and
how they were reported. Work by Professor Keith Hawthorne at the Research
Centre for Suicide in Cambridge, sponsored by Befrienders International, identified
several areas of influence. The new clause was designed to help prevent copycat sui-
JOUR_C13.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 233
cides, and added a new sub-section to clause 5 that said: ‘When reporting suicide,
care should be taken to avoid excessive detail about the method used.’ Code
Committee chairman Les Hinton said: ‘We have attempted to minimise that risk –
while maintaining the public’s right to know – by emphasising the need for care to
avoid excessive detail, unless it is in the wider public interest to give the information.
For example, while it might be perfectly proper to report that the suicide was caused
by an overdose of Paracetamol, it would probably be excessive to state the number
of tablets used. We have consulted with the industry on this and it has been
accepted. The new rule, in effect, codifies a practice already currently followed by
many editors.’
It seems unlikely that there will any significant change in the approach to press
regulation in the near future. The general view of the establishment seems to be that
the Press has improved its performance over the past twenty years or so and that the
PCC is doing what it needs to. There may be a number of reasons why things are
seen to be working other than the PCC. There is now fuller education and training
for new journalists and a more reflective approach to journalism from both prac-
titioners and academics; there have been more books written about journalism
ethics and standards in the UK in the past ten years, for instance, than ever before.
However, the PCC’s calm behind-the-scenes approach to self-regulation and
Meyer’s subtle improvements and more careful pressure on editors has meant that
it has been able to rein in the worst excesses over the past ten years, making it easier
for governments to resist the public pressure to bring in statutory regulation.
A look to Ireland shows how things could be going, with negotiations on a press
council in some disarray and the publication of a draconian Privacy Bill coupled
with a more acceptable Defamation Bill. This seems to be a classic carrot-and-stick
approach on behalf of the government to try to get the press in Ireland to accept a
Press Council with the reward of a new Defamation Act to replace Ireland’s present
laws, or the threat of an unacceptable Privacy Act if things don’t go well.
Two main books stand out when looking at regulation of the press in the UK. Tom O’Malley and
Clive Soley (2000) Regulating the Press (Pluto, London) takes a critical look at the history of the
Press Council and its replacement by the Press Complaints Commission.
Richard Shannon (2001) A Press Free and Responsible (John Murray, London) charts the
founding and development of the Press Complaints Commission. This was commissioned by the
PCC itself to mark its tenth anniversary and is consequently far less critical of the PCC. It relies
for its evidence almost entirely on those who support the PCC, mainly editors and newspaper
insiders.
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Chapter 14
H I STO RY O F B R OAD CAST

R E G U LATI O N
This chapter examines the history and development of regulation

in broadcast journalism and covers:
• The development of the BBC radio news service in the 1930s

• The introduction of independent television and then the expansion of radio
• The development of digital broadcast services
Journalism ethics were closely linked with the press in the early part of the twen-
tieth century for the obvious reason that broadcasting did not start in earnest until
the 1920s. Even then the tight control exercised over the BBC meant that there were
not the kind of concerns about broadcast ethics that grew about the Press.
Radio, like many technologies, was invented and developed by a number of
people, but we can certainly identify radio being used commercially by 1900. At this
stage, in the UK at least, the military was determined to keep it under its control as
a method of strategic and tactical communication. This was not heavily resisted as
the idea of using radio as a broadcast system, rather than as a two-way communi-
cation device, meant there was not much consideration of a public broadcast
system; few (although not all) were prescient enough to see how the world would
be swamped by broadcast entertainment in the future. After the Great War, the mili-
tary were obliged to release their control a little and a ground-breaking transmission
by the famous opera singer Dame Nellie Melba on 15 June 1920 (Crissell 1997: 10),
heard across Europe and in America, showed what could be achieved; a British
Broadcasting Company was set up in 1922 by the main manufacturers of radio sets,
determined to increase their market by producing programmes the public might
enjoy and would need to buy a radio set to hear. The new company was licensed by
the Postmaster-General under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1904 with funding
coming from the licence fee and royalties from the sales of wireless sets. In 1927 the
BBC was converted to a corporation taking up the recommendations of the
Crawford committee, which now saw clearly how important a public radio broad-
cast system could be. The new corporation was set up by the government, but was
quasi autonomous with a board of governors and funding coming from the licence
fee, a basic structure that has remained unchanged until 2007. The public took to
radio and by 1939 there were nine million radio licences and up to five times as
many receivers. Because broadcasting was set up by government, controlled by a
royal charter with governors appointed by the government of the day, the BBC was
JOUR_C14.QXP 26/2/07 14:27 Page 235
very much an establishment instrument, a criticism it has faced consistently

throughout its history.
The one early disappointment in radio was a lack of news. Pressure by the
Newspapers Proprietors Assocation, owners of national newspapers, meant that the
government forbade the corporation to carry news before 7 p.m. and even then the
bulletin had to be provided by Reuters written with newspaper readers in mind
(Crissell 1997: 15). For this reason, ethics in broadcasting was less of a problem
than for newspapers, and although the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) decided
at its annual conference in 1936 to introduce a code of conduct, there were very few,
if any, members working in broadcast at this time. The BBC had a staff association
and did not recognise other unions. In any case, with news being produced outside
the BBC, there were few staff members eligible. This started to change with the
introduction of radio news in 1938, and in 1942 there was the formation of the BBC
chapel in Bush House – the European Service Chapel, joined shortly after by the
Overseas Service Chapel. These became the London Radio Branch on their later
merger. Although the Broadcast Report 1949 (1950) recommended that the BBC
recognise appropriate unions, the NUJ wasn’t finally recognised until 1 January
1955 (Bundock 1957: 192).
With the end of the Second World War, during which the BBC’s news service
had guaranteed it a place of trust with listeners, the BBC launched new services,
offering its listeners more variety with the Light Programme, the Home Service and
the Third Programme. The BBC also reintroduced its TV service, which it had
started in 1936, but had suspended for the duration of the war. The Selsdon
Committee in 1934 had recommended that the BBC should run a trial TV service.
This should be provided on a transmission system using a minimum of 240 lines
and in the event a 405-line service, using the EMI electronic system, soon proved
itself to be the best. However, the system was closed in September 1939 because of
the war. It was relaunched by the BBC in 1946 and was enthusiastically received
by the public. The coronation in 1953 was a major event with many buying their
first television set and inviting their neighbours to join them to watch the spectacle.
This was the first of several major public events which have been pivotal in intro-
ducing major changes in technology, the latest being the introduction of
high-definition TV for the World Cup in 2006.
Independent television
The Television Act 1954 set up commercial television. The Act, together with the
reports that led to it, identified a number of issues of concern about television. These
included regulation, standards of programming, hours of broadcast, ownership,
advertising and sponsorship, and the broadcast watershed. The Act set up a regulatory
authority, the Independent Television Authority that had a duty to approve pro-
grammes before broadcast and so was able to prevent the broadcast of programmes
it deemed unsuitable. Similarly, the Postmaster-General retained the right to instruct
the banning of a programme or to insist on the broadcast of something particular.
JOUR_C14.QXP 26/2/07 14:27 Page 236
236 1 4 • History of broadcast regulation
The ITA was structured around a chairman, deputy chairman and eight other
members. It had the power to provide television services in addition to those of the
BBC and as a public service for information, education and entertainment. The
programmes were to be provided by programme contractors rather than the auth-
ority itself, and those contractors would have the right to include advertisements.
The programmes would not offend good taste and decency or incite crime or lead
to disorder. The Act insisted there should be adequate news with due accuracy and
impartiality. The authority was also obliged to draw up a code of practice for pro-
grammes covering such matters as children’s viewing and watersheds. The ITA had
the right to limit newspaper shareholdings in the new programme contractors and
the government retained control over hours of broadcasting. The ITA was obliged
to provide a news service for the new commercial station and set up Independent
Television News in 1955. This provided national and international news for the
new service. It took to television much more quickly than the BBC, according to
Crissell. Its use of film clips from scene, and presenters with some authoritative
analysis were welcomed by viewers and its reputation was quickly built up as
being more populist than the BBC but certainly still an effective news gatherer to
be trusted.
BBC 2 launched in 1964 bringing with it the new upgraded transmission system.
From now on, 625 lines would become the standard transmission quality, although
it would be 1975 before the last 405-lines TV was built, and 1985 before transmis-
sions in 405-lines were phased out. Colour, another innovation, was launched in
1967 on BBC 2, followed the year after on BBC 1.
By 1964 there were still only three UK radio stations, the BBC’s Home, Light and
Third services. These were very traditional and the fast-growing pop record industry
that was building on airtime in the USA was attractive to young people who had
been listening to American stars and home-grown offerings on Radio Luxembourg,
which had been transmitting commercial radio since the war. This only transmitted
at night though and its signal was not strong. Several pirate radio stations – Radio
London and Radio Caroline were probably the best known – set up around this time
to capitalise on this market, which had been fanned by a rise in disposable income
for teenagers and the explosion of British pop from the Beatles’ Merseysound and
London groups such as the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and Manchester’s The
Hollies. The BBC’s research found that despite there being large numbers of young
people listening to the pirates, there was no significant change in Light Programme
listening, suggesting there was a whole new market that had been previously ignored
(Crissell 1997: 140). The government wanted to close down the pirates and
instructed the BBC to change its radio policy. The BBC introduced Radio 1 to offer
non-stop pop music together with Radio 2, 3 and 4 shortly after the government
passed the Marine etc. Broadcast Offences Act 1967 in August of that year, which
closed most of the pirates down. In November 1967 the first BBC local radio station
opened in Leicester and within a few years, there were twenty local stations. The
superior sound quality of FM was also introduced at about this time.
Up to this time it was generally accepted that broadcast news both on radio and
TV were of a high standard – a view that largely holds good today. Any complaints
JOUR_C14.QXP 26/2/07 14:27 Page 237
that were made were investigated by complaints panels set up internally by the BBC
(Programmes Complaints Commission) or the Independent Television Authority
(Complaints Review Board for Independent TV). They would publish their findings
in the TV Times or The Listener. The BBC’s Complaints Commission in particular
had been criticised for not having a broad enough base (Press Council 1972: 94) but
there was not too much criticism of news and current affairs. This did not prevent
much criticism from some sources of TV for producing programmes that showed
too much violence and bad language.
The passing of the Sound Broadcasting Act through Parliament in 1972, which
allowed the setting up of a range of local commercial radio, coincided with the
Younger Committee’s recommendations on broadcasting which attempted to
strengthen regulation in both the BBC and the ITA. It asked the BBC to extend the
powers of the Complaints Commission to cover privacy and to amend some of its
procedures. The Committee also asked the ITA’s review board to publish its adju-
dications and extend its procedures to commercial radio, if and when the Authority
took responsibility for the new services (Committee on Privacy 1972: 14).
In the Second Report from the Select Committee on the Nationalised Industries
in April 1972, Tony Benn (who had earlier been Postmaster-General) said that the
debate on broadcasting should move beyond who controls what to look at the
broader question of broadcasting’s role and status in society now it was the domi-
nant medium. Some parliamentarians were becoming concerned that the controls of
the Television Act and the BBC Charter might not be enough to prevent television
overpowering Parliament itself.
Independent Broadcasting Authority

On 14 May 1970, John Stonehouse, the then Postmaster-General, announced that
he had invited Lord Annan, Provost of University College London, to head an inde-
pendent committee of enquiry, the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting, to
look at the long-term future of broadcasting after the Television Act and the BBC
Charter expired in 1976. Almost immediately, a general election was called which
unexpectedly gave victory to the Conservative Party under Edward Heath. They
decided not to rush into a new enquiry and instead the Sound Broadcasting Act
(1972) introduced the possibility of local radio and changed the ITA to the
Independent Broadcasting Authority, a move later confirmed by the Independent
Broadcasting Authority Act 1973. This change also allowed the new Independent
Broadcasting Authority to regulate the first independent radio stations.
The IBA consisted of a chairman, deputy chairman and eight other members. It
was set up ‘to provide the television and local sound broadcasting services as a
public service for disseminating information, education and entertainment’. These
services had to be of a high standard, particularly with reference to content and
quality and a proper balance and wide range of subject matter (Independent
Broadcasting Authority Act 1973, clause 19 section 2 subsection a).
These services were to be provided by programme contractors who would pay
the Authority for the privilege of making such programmes, but would be able to
JOUR_C14.QXP 26/2/07 14:27 Page 238
include advertisements within their programmes. This approach, mirroring what

had happened with the old ITA meant that the authority was still responsible for
programmes, giving it the power of prior restraint and making it, rather than the
contractors, directly responsible for the standard and quality of programmes. This
is an important point as it means that while there was definitely commercial tele-
vision and radio being produced, it was still entirely controlled by a quango that
was responsible to the government rather than being entirely independent. It also
meant that the IBA could have set up its own studios if it wished, rather than relying
on the programme contractors to do this for them. This meant that the IBA was
responsible for TV scheduling and ensuring that programme contractors filled the
spots designated to them. The Act laid down in detail what the IBA was supposed
to provide in terms of programming. It was obliged to arrange for the provision of
programmes needed in order to see a reasonable balance and to provide education
broadcasting services and other public broadcasting services. This meant that the
IBA had a specific duty to provide programmes that did not offend against good
taste and decency, that there was sufficient time given to news programmes and that
such programmes should be accurate and impartial, that there be a proper propor-
tion of British programmes and programmes of British performance as well as
programmes for minorities.
The dangers of subliminal advertising were mentioned and such adverts were
banned. Also there was considerable concern about the detrimental effect on public
morals that prizes on TV game shows might bring. Such programmes were not
allowed to offer prizes of significant value, building up a viewer expectation that a
pair of slippers was not only all you could expect for Christmas, but also all you
could expect for winning a game show. The IBA was obliged to record all its output,
and the law specifically excludes such recordings from infringing copyright. The IBA
was also obliged to draw up a code of guidance on violence and other matters con-
cerning standards.
January also saw the Minister for Posts and Telecommunications relax the rules
on hours of broadcasting so that broadcasters could now broadcast when they
wished, for the first time. This opened up programming, allowing lunchtime news
reports on TV for the first time.
In February 1974 the Labour Party was returned to power and broadcasting was
moved to the Home Office, following the abolition of the Ministry of Posts and
Telecommunications. Roy Jenkins, Home Secretary, appointed the former journalist
John Harris, now Lord Harris of Greenwich, to be Minister of State responsible for
broadcasting. On 10 April 1974, Jenkins announced the revival of the Annan
Committee to consider the future of the broadcasting services in the United
Kingdom. New legislation was needed to extend the life of the Television Act and
the Independent Broadcasting Authority Act which would otherwise have closed the
IBA, and the services it was set up to provide, in July 1976. There was some concern
amongst ITV circles about the sixteen members of the Annan Committee: ‘Not a
single one of the sixteen members was identifiable as what might be described as an
ITV viewer and, to judge an industry with a multi-million pound turnover, fifteen
out of sixteen had no first-hand experience of business’ (Potter 1989: 225).
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The Annan Committee presented its report to Parliament on 23 March 1977 and
the government issued a white paper shortly after in 1978. This recommended a
number of new bodies: Local Broadcasting Authority (for local radio and cable), an
Open Broadcasting Authority (for the new fourth channel), a Public Enquiry Board
(to hold public meetings every seven years), a Telecommunications Advisory
Committee and a Broadcasting Complaints Commission.
The Labour government lost the election in 1979 and the Conservatives took
over, issuing a new broadcasting bill in February 1980 which received assent in
November to become the Broadcasting Act 1980. It was followed by the
Broadcasting Act 1981 that consolidated the 1973, 1974, 1978 and 1980 Acts. The
Act did little to change the main structure of broadcasting regulation, but it did
introduce a new body: the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, which had been
strongly advocated by Lord Annan and which had received strong general support.
It was set up to consider and adjudicate complaints of unjust or unfair treatment in
television and radio programmes or of unwarranted infringement of privacy in, or
in connection with, the obtaining of material included in programmes. Its first
chairman was Lady Pike. Geoffrey Robertson said: ‘its work since inception has
been unimpressive’ (1983: 163). He was far from being the only critic. The council
was there to consider complaints about unfair or unjust treatment in sound or tele-
vision programmes or unwarranted infringement of privacy. Having adjudicated on
complaints, the Act gave the Commission the power to insist a broadcaster should
broadcast the Commission’s adjudication.
The Broadcasting Act 1981 also paved the way to Channel 4 and S4C and these
channels launched in 1982. They were followed the next year by breakfast TV
finally paving the way for what was virtually 24-hour TV.
A second regulatory council was set up in 1988 to keep a closer eye on the stan-
dards of broadcasters. It was seen very much as Mrs Thatcher’s baby, her committee
to reduce the amount of sex and violence on TV. Lord Rees Mogg, the former Times
editor, was made its first chairman. The Broadcasting Standards Council was to
monitor the portrayal of violence and sex and matters of taste and decency. This
would include bad language and the treatment of disasters in radio and TV pro-
grammes or broadcast advertisements.
The Council was set up initially on a non-statutory basis pending legislation that
arrived in the shape of the 1990 Broadcasting Act. The first director of the BSC was
Colin Shaw, the former Director of TV at the Independent Broadcasting Authority
and former Chief Secretary at the BBC where he had worked for almost twenty
years.
At the end of the 1980s, the government introduced a media ban, directing the
BBC, IBA and the Radio Authority to ‘refrain from broadcasting any . . . words
spoken’ by a person who represents an organisation proscribed by the Prevention of
Terrorism Act seeking support from that organisation, including Sinn Fein,
Republican Sinn Fein and the Ulster Defence Association. This was not lifted until
the mid-1990s.
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The market moves in
Broadcasting regulation underwent a major change during the early 1990s, fol-
lowing the signing of the Broadcasting Act 1990. This introduced a more flexible
approach to broadcast regulation. The BBC continued under the control of the
Board of Governors, but the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) was
replaced by the Independent Television Commission, the Welsh Authority, S4C, and
the Radio Authority. These came into operation on 1 January 1993. The
Broadcasting Complaints Commission was also retained, as was the Broadcasting
Standards Council, now with statutory authority. Their responsibilities remained
largely unchanged. They were charged with investigating complaints but could
punish only by insisting on the transmission of findings.
One of the main changes of the Broadcasting Act was to remove from the ITC
the control of programming that the old IBA had had. The ITC now awarded fran-
chises to companies to transmit programmes in specific areas. This meant it was no
longer able to vet programmes before they were shown; it could only deal with com-
plaints made after they were broadcast. This was a major change in approach and
finally opened the door to true independent commercial television, even though the
Act still required franchise holders to follow public service rules designed to ensure
the provision of news services, children’s programmes, religious content and high
standards of programmes and adverts. The new Act continued to ensure that news-
paper owners were unable to invest heavily in broadcasting; ensuring that TV
stations could not own significant shares in newspapers and vice versa was seen as
an important part of limiting potential monopoly of the media.
The Broadcasting Act 1996 (first published on 15 December 1995 and receiving
Royal Assent on 25 July 1996) brought in three main changes concerning regu-
lation. One was to introduce changes in the way licences for existing broadcasting
stations were granted. The requirement remained for licence holders to be fit and
proper persons who had to follow a set of regulations, while the rules on cross-
media ownership were significantly loosened, allowing big media groups to own far
more. These rules came into effect on 1 November 1996 and allowed independent
radio stations to own one AM, one FM and one other (AM or FM) service instead
of a maximum of one FM and one AM service in overlapping areas. It allowed local
newspapers to own local radio services in overlapping areas for the first time. Local
newspapers with a circulation under 20 per cent were allowed to own one AM, one
FM and one other service, like any other company. Papers with 20 to 50 per cent
circulation in an area were allowed to own one AM and one FM service in that area,
and those with more than 50 per cent were allowed to own one service in that area
(provided there was more than one independent local radio service in the area). The
Act also removed ownership controls on cable operators.
The second big change was to introduce digital TV and to offer the large number
of digital multiplex channels to broadcasters. A multiplex is a frequency band on
which several programme services and sometimes additional data services can be
combined. The Department of National Heritage said six television and seven radio
multiplexes were to be available initially and, with the exception of the BBC’s tele-
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The market moves in 241
vision and national radio multiplexes, were to be licensed to multiplex providers by

the Independent Television Commission and the Radio Authority. These multiplex
operators in turn offered a range of programme services on each multiplex. Existing
broadcasters were being offered half a multiplex for each existing channel. This gave
the BBC full control of a multiplex. Channel 3 and Channel 4 share a multiplex, on
which capacity is also reserved for the public teletext service. Channel 5 have half
of the third multiplex and S4C were offered the other half of this multiplex in
Wales. Terrestrial television broadcasters had to declare their intention to take up
their guaranteed places on terrestrial digital multiplexes by 15 October 1996. Most
did and digital services were launched in late 1997 and 1998. No fee is payable for
the first of the twelve-year multiplex licences which will be awarded to the appli-
cants whose proposals are ‘most likely to promote the development of digital
terrestrial broadcasting. Companies must demonstrate a commitment to the “roll-
out” of transmission and to promoting the take-up of receiving equipment. They
must also be able to demonstrate that they intend to supply a variety of program-
ming, that their plans are commercially viable and sustainable and that they will
deal fairly with broadcasters’ (Department of National Heritage, Press Release, July
1996).
The third change made by the Broadcasting Act was to alter the regulations and
to order the amalgamation of the BSC and the BCC into a new Broadcasting
Standards Commission with a wider remit but similar powers. The amalgamation
came into effect on 1 April 1997.
National Heritage Secretary Virginia Bottomley announced in July 1996 that
Lady Howe of Aberavon would be the Chairman of the new Broadcasting Standards
Commission, with Lord Dubs as one Deputy Chairman and Jane Leighton as the
other. Lady Howe had been appointed Chairman of the old BSC from 1993 and so
had continuity of experience.
Regulations on the requirement for regional programming were tightened up by
the new Act, while provision was made for a list of major sporting events that could
not become exclusive to pay-per-view or subscription television to be drawn up. The
news service for Channel 3 would be provided by a company selected by the ITV
companies from a field which met the ITC’s quality threshold.
The Act also empowered the Independent Television Commission to regulate the
BBC and S4C’s commercial activities, and privatised the BBC’s transmission
network. From 13 August 1996, the Independent Television Commission and the
Radio Authority were allowed to give decisions on the public interest test they
intended to use on the common ownership and control of newspapers and broad-
casters.
The Broadcasting Act 1996 had been set up to allow for convergence and to launch
the new digital TV broadcasting. After the initial difficulties of setting up a digital service,
the BBC and various commercial interests were able to produce a mixed service of free
terrestrial broadcasting, paid-for cable services and satellite services that brought digital
TV to people’s homes. As the need for convergence became clearer, the new Labour gov-
ernment decided that broadcasting required a new, lighter-touch, streamlined regulator
bringing together the convergence industries of broadcasting, internet and telephony.
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Ofcom was launched after a short consultation period. So keen was the govern-
ment to get Ofcom up and running that it launched the body with the Office of
Communications Act in 2002 and only the year after followed with the
Communications Act 2003 which said what Ofcom should be regulating.
The Communications Act facilitated the move to digital broadcasting and the
new lighter-touch broadcasting regulation system. This allowed far more cross-
media ownership than ever before. Gone were the strict quota systems. Ofcom is a
long way from the old Independent Television Authority with its remit of providing
commercial programming. Ofcom’s light touch is designed to control a range of
commercial broadcasters working in a variety of circumstances. They have an obli-
gation to some public service broadcasting, but Ofcom does not have the power of
prior restraint and merely allocates franchises to commercial bidders to use within
the rules it lays down, rather than providing a service with the help of contract
providers.
2 003 – a year of drama
Three major events came together in 2003 to completely change the way broad-
casting regulation works. First the Communications Act made its progress through
the House ready to give the fledgling Ofcom its power. Secondly Lord Hutton
reported on the David Kelly affair, exposing a range of weaknesses within the BBC
that it rushed to seal. Finally, the House of Commons Select Committee into Privacy
and Media Intrusion decided to look at complaints coming from a range of sources
about invasion of privacy and the behaviour of the media. Although the committee
was particularly concerned about the press, it also took the opportunity to look at
broadcasting. The committee met through the early part of 2003, announcing its
findings in June. Ofcom was running by this time but had not fully taken over the
reins, as the Communications Act, which gives it its power, did not receive royal
assent until July and Ofcom did not take over its role fully until January of 2004.
The select committee came up with more than thirty recommendations, some
aimed at broadcasters and some at the press and the PCC. The most significant was
the recommendation that there should be a law on privacy. This was immediately
rejected by the government, as indeed were many of the other recommendations.
The fledgling Ofcom was told it must seize the opportunity to reconsider how com-
plaints against broadcasters should be handled. It was also suggested it should
debate with the industry how to handle media scrums. One of Ofcom’s first con-
cerns was to launch the debate about the future of public service broadcasting. The
BBC’s failings from earlier that year made this a particularly important debate and
probably helps explain why the BBC was so quick to pick up the lessons from the
Hutton report concerning the death of Dr David Kelly. The BBC had come under
sustained attack from the government after broadcasting a story claiming the gov-
ernment had lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This
story had been based on evidence from a civil servant who later committed suicide
following the pressure of the story. The BBC stood by its story until the Hutton
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report finished its enquiry into the matter in early 2004, announcing that Andrew
Gilligan’s claim – that the government probably knew that the 45-minute claim was
wrong or questionable before the dossier was published – was unfounded.
Hutton went on to announce that he believed the BBC’s editorial system was
defective in allowing such allegations to be broadcast without seeing a script of
what was to be said and considering whether it should be approved. He also felt that
Mr Gilligan’s language was imprecise in that the term ‘sexed up’ used by Mr
Gilligan in reference to the government’s attempted changes to the document could
have two meanings, one of which might be acceptable and one of which wasn’t.
Because of this, Lord Hutton considered that the allegation was unfounded because
many who heard the broadcast would have taken the latter meaning. Lord Hutton
was also concerned that there were two versions of Mr Gilligan’s notes of his inter-
view with David Kelly as this meant it was impossible to be sure what Dr Kelly had
told Mr Gilligan. Because of this, Lord Hutton decided that Dr Kelly had not told
Mr Gilligan that the government knew the 45-minute claim was wrong, or that he
had told Mr Gilligan that the 45-minute claim was not included in the draft docu-
ment because it only came from one source. Lord Hutton also wondered whether
Dr Kelly had said more to Mr Gilligan than he had intended and that at the time of
the meeting he had not realised the gravity of the situation which he was helping to
create. It is entirely likely that neither Andrew Gilligan nor David Kelly were aware
of how their breakfast meeting would end up rocking the nation, leading to the
death of one of them and the resignation of the other and several other key per-
sonnel at the BBC.
In his conclusions, Lord Hutton said that the allegations made by Mr Gilligan about
the government were unfounded, and that editors should have seen a script of what he
intended to say and that the editorial systems were defective in not insisting on this. He
was also critical of the BBC management system that had not picked up on criticisms
of Andrew Gilligan’s reporting style from Kevin Marsh, the editor of the Today pro-
gramme (http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/report/chapter12.htm#a90
(accessed 17/7/06)). The crushing criticisms of the BBC, its editorial systems, its man-
agement and its reporter led to the governors finally agreeing they should apologise,
causing the resignation of the Director General, Greg Dyke (who still does not accept
the Hutton criticisms) the reporter concerned, Andrew Gilligan, and the chairman of
the governors, Sir Christopher Bland. The new acting Director General Mark Byford,
quickly set up a review committee chaired by the BBC’s Director of News Ronald Neil.
The Neil report said the committee was satisfied that a proper core script had been pro-
duced and approved for the 29 May 2003 broadcast, but that that had not then been
followed by Andrew Gilligan. The committee concluded that the BBC’s report of 6.07
a.m. on 29 May 2003 ‘was inaccurate and that with hindsight it would have done a
number of things differently’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/pdf/neil_report.pdf
The committee also:
• identified the problem of only using one source for a story,
• found that the notes did not support the allegations made,
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• agreed that the allegations were not put to Downing Street for comment,
• believed there was an issue of fairness in not being clear about the nature of the allegations
which prevented a proper opportunity to respond,
• said that the broadcast should have been scripted (although the BBC insists a core script was
prepared, but not followed)
• and advised that the rules about BBC journalists writing for the press should be tightened.
The committee went on to recommend to the BBC that:

• Names of sources should always be used if possible;
• Anonymity should never be granted casually or automatically;
• Single source stories could continue if they were in the public interest and proper procedures
were followed;
• Good note taking was of paramount importance;
• Two-way interviews should not be used for stories containing serious or potentially defamatory
allegations;
• BBC staff would not be allowed to write newspaper articles dealing with current affairs;
• More emphasis was required on training;
• It should firm-up its complaints procedures.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/pdf/neil_report.pdf (accessed 18/7/06))
As the BBC rallied under its new Chairman, Michael Grade and its new Director-
General Mark Thompson, putting into practice those recommendations, Ofcom
was busy carrying out an extensive consultation process about the future of public
service broadcasting. It issued several consultation documents and the debate raged
on through 2004 and 2005. The government finally issued its white paper on the
future of broadcasting in March 2006, with Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell
announcing that the BBC would continue to receive the bulk of the licence fee, but
it would now be overseen by a new Trust, separate from its management. This
would replace the governors who had always been in a dual role: there to run the
BBC but also to protect viewers. In the future, the white paper proposed, the BBC
would be run by an executive board and would be overseen by the Trust which
would be a unique organisation that would serve the public interest by ensuring the
delivery of quality and value to licence-fee payers. Licences would be issued by the
trust to the Executive Board for running each BBC service with a ‘public value test’
to be applied to all new BBC services or significant changes to existing services. The
market-impact assessment for the public-value tests would be carried out by Ofcom.
The government started recruiting for the new Trust in the summer of 2006, hoping
to appoint up to seven new members to join Michael Grade who was to be the first
chairman along with three other members of the existing board of governors,
including the member designate for Scotland.
As part of the licence fee settlement, the government proposed new forms of
assistance for Channel 4, such as asking the BBC to provide Channel 4 with
financial help towards meeting its capital switch-over costs, and Channel 4’s desire
to secure a limited amount of additional digital terrestrial capacity from the BBC.
Advances in technology continue to be one of the major concerns for regulation.
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High-definition TV meant a new set of standards, but more important is the conver-
gence of internet on broadband and TV and radio. The ability of broadband users
to be able to access radio services and HD television services and download them at
times to suit themselves means that scheduling may soon be a thing of the past.
Terrestrial scheduled broadcasts will no doubt continue for a long time, but gradu-
ally people will learn to build their own schedule as they either save broadcast
programmes or download programmes from the appropriate website to watch when
they want. High-definition TV is in its early days, but the World Cup in 2006 was
used as a platform to launch it to the UK public, as well as TV services to mobile
phones and the internet. The ability to move outside the rigid broadcast schedules
of earlier years by uploading programmes from the internet, record or upload to a
mobile phone was showing that the consumer would play a much larger part in how
broadcasting worked than ever before. This is an important part of Ofcom’s
responsibility. It is a responsibility it shares with the BBC when it comes to the
switch-over to digital. The government confirmed its plans to switch over television
and remove the analog signal over several years, starting in 2008 and ending in
2012. The white paper identified that the BBC would play a large role in educating
people about the switch-over and would be obliged to help those in particular need
such as the elderly.
Local digital terrestrial television was another element of the switch-over that
was seen as important by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and would
follow fairly closely behind the digital switch-over.
Ofcom reviewed the Broadcasting Standards Commission Code of Practice
during its early days and drew up a new code that it issued in 2005
(http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes/). This was one of the recommendations of
the DCMS select committee back in 2003, and an obligation under the
Communications Act 2003.
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Chapter 15
C O D E S O F C O N D U CT AS A
R E G U LATO RY SYSTE M
This chapter looks at the uses of codes of conduct, including:
• The development of codes of conduct

• Styles of code
• Elements of codes of conduct
Many countries have codes of conduct for journalists: Kantian-style universal direc-
tives that oblige journalists to behave in a certain way. Codes are designed to cover
the main ethical problems faced by journalists in gathering information for stories;
dealing with their contacts and sources; how they go about publishing, broadcasting
and presenting the information gathered and how they guarantee the quality of the
information, including dealing with complaints that arise.
It is interesting to draw comparisons between the different codes of conduct of
the PCC, Ofcom, the BBC and the NUJ, as they highlight the differences in
approach to journalism by print journalists, broadcast journalists, publishers and
broadcasters. They also help expose the distorting effect that results from treating
journalism as a marketable product rather than something that should be made
available to people as part of some democratic responsibility. The other regulatory
bodies in the UK do not have such far-reaching codes, and I will mention them when
applicable.
Both the PCC Code and the NUJ Code are printed in full in Appendices 1 and 2
respectively. The BBC Editorial Guidelines is a long and very detailed document
and so excerpts are used in the appendices as comparisons. The entire document is
available on the World Wide Web at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorial-
guidelines/edguide/. Ofcom’s code is also lengthy and is available at
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes/bcode/ but an edited version is in the appen-
dices. It came into force in July 2005. Several other codes are also published in the
appendices of this book for comparison, but all the European codes can be found at
http://www.uta.fi/ethicnet/.
Virtually all democratic societies insist on some standards of ethical behaviour
from their media. Consequently, many countries now have codes of conduct, upheld
by professional or cross-industry bodies or, in some instances, by a legally
appointed tribunal. Essentially, a code of conduct is a list of dos and don’ts to guide
journalists through the maze of moral problems they face from day to day, and, as
Nigel G.E. Harris points out: ‘one of the most noteworthy features of codes for jour-
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Moral basis of codes 247
nalists is just how wide is the range of countries in which they have been adopted.
They are found not just in Western Europe and North America, but in countries as
diverse as Egypt, South Korea, Jamaica, Mali and Venezuela’ (1992: 62). But, as this
chapter explains, the content and types of issue covered by codes vary a great deal
and their use and effectiveness have varied in the many countries in which they
operate. However, before looking at the codes themselves we need to look at some
of the fundamental issues that underlie them.
Personal codes versus public codes
Most people have their own personal code against which they can measure their
behaviour. Some people’s codes are pretty basic, whereas others have a much
stricter personal code. Whatever a person’s code is, it has to be self-policing; if it is
breached, only he or she will know. Since people generally have a good idea about
the motivation of their behaviour and most of the circumstances involved in a par-
ticular problem, they can act as both prosecutor and judge to determine whether
this act or that breaches their personal code. However, codes which are externally
regulated – that is, public codes – are more complex. It is no longer a question of
acting as your own judge and jury.
A public code involves trying to work to a universal statement which is univer-
sally applied; if it is wrong for one person to do something under certain
circumstances, then it must be wrong for another person to do the same thing under
the same circumstances. This is obviously different from a personal code where an
action I may well consider to be wrong would be considered perfectly acceptable
by someone else. Because I work for Global News Corporation, for instance, I
might consider it morally wrong to be disloyal to my employer by covering a story
about corruption in GNC. However, a reporter from another news organisation
could cover the same story with enthusiasm. Of course, I might consider any cor-
ruption to be wrong and would attempt to cover such a story for my news
organisation. I might then be dismissed or be obliged to resign for damaging my
employer’s business.
For the universal application of moral codes, everyone has to be clear about and
accept what the code has to say. Because of this, codes tend to be limited to areas
of general agreement and phrased in a way that covers all circumstances. So, for
instance, a code could stipulate that it is wrong that I should lie to get a story about
GNC corruption, whichever company I worked for.
Moral basis of codes
Codes of conduct are usually described as being deontological. They are based on
the duties contained within them. Anyone following a code of conduct does not
need to identify the consequences that flow from their action in order to see that
they are behaving morally. The mere fact that their motive is to behave morally and
JOUR_C15.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 248
248 1 5 • Codes of conduct as a regulatory system
that they follow the code of conduct previously laid down is sufficient for them to
be seen as behaving morally. This flows from Kantian categorical imperatives.
Universal laws can be drawn up identifying what is generally agreed to be moral
behaviour for that group of professionals. A series of clauses is usually produced
obliging a journalist to tell the truth, or report only in a straightforward manner. A
typical clause would say: ‘Journalists must not engage in intimidation, harassment
or persistent pursuit’ (PCC 2006). This is clear and unambiguous. It is universal and
has no qualifications. All journalists are obliged to follow this clause of the code and
there can be no exceptions. That fits in well with Kantian theory of moral obli-
gation. There is a universal law, it does apply in all circumstances and a journalist
can adhere to it without any fear of behaving immorally – except that further up,
the code says: ‘It should not be interpreted so . . . broadly that it constitutes an
unnecessary interference with freedom of expression or prevents publication in the
public interest.’ There clearly may be times when a journalist knows that publi-
cation in the public interest is vital for a story, but that that might mean harassment
of a contact. Yet if the clause of the code is truly Kantian, there should be no way
the journalist can avoid fulfilling the clause without bending or even breaking the
clause. The PCC (and other code-making organisations) realise this and most jour-
nalistic codes have a public interest defence written into them. The PCC says: ‘There
may be exceptions to the clause marked * where they can be demonstrated to be in
the public interest.’ Clauses so marked include the one on harassment as well as
those on privacy, children, reporting of crime and clandestine devices.
These rule-based codes serve a number of useful purposes for professionals. They
save time, ensuring there is no need to reinvent the wheel at every moral dilemma.
A consequentialist has to weigh the evidence at every decision, but a deontologist
can just follow the rules. If the rules says ‘Thou shalt not steal’, then it’s easy to
follow: one just does not steal. This makes life quite a bit easier; no need to worry
about whether you will get away with it, if you will be spotted, if you can make your
escape, where to hide the stolen goods and if you will be able to sell them.
Another important function of codes of conduct is the important public relations
role they have. They are often introduced to reassure the public that a profession
has standards of practice and to imply, at least, that professionals who transgress
those standards will be disciplined. Many professions and trades have raced to
introduce codes of practice over the past few years in the light of rising consumer
consciousness: ‘Written codes of ethics suggest that the mass media, and the men
and women who produce them, are virtuous servants of society. They imply unified
allegiance to professional standards of performance’ (Gordon et al. 1998: 65).
A trade or profession feels better able to fend off public criticism if it has a code
of practice it can produce to wave at the public in times of crisis. Whether it is travel
agents replying to criticisms following a large number of complaints from dissatis-
fied holiday-makers or insurance companies fearing high levels of claims and
complaints following a big storm, the calming influence of a code of practice is very
important. A company finds that being able to claim that all will be dealt with
according to the code of practice deflects criticism in a way that is difficult to achieve
by any other method. It allows decisions to be delayed whilst tempers cool and,
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Framing codes of conduct 249
more importantly, the issues to be forgotten (and maybe even forgiven) by the wider
public. No industry has failed to notice that codes of practice can add an aura of
respectability and fairness without necessarily forcing any real need for responsi-
bility. It is almost impossible to achieve this in any other way. Even government has
seen the benefit of introducing codes, such as the citizen’s charter.
A code of conduct also allows debate. The PCC now reviews its code on an
annual basis. The NUJ reviewed its code in 2006. In both cases, people know what
the code is (or can easily find out) and involve themselves in the debate. If an issue
springs up, then all can look at the code and see how it serves the journalist in that
ethical dilemma and the code can be adjusted if required.
Just as the code allows debate, so it allows education. For new practitioners, stu-
dents and even seasoned professionals, identifying a code of practice can help
develop an understanding of the issues identified in a code and encourage consider-
ation of how best to apply the elements of the code. Having identified what the
industry generally thinks is appropriate behaviour, it is easy to school others into
the correct stance.
Framing codes of conduct
Writing a code of conduct is not easy if it is to fulfil its aims. It should be short and
easy to remember. A long code will be one that is accessed only at times of difficulty.
The BBC Editorial Guidelines are excellent, but no one could remember them all
and they need to be accessed in order to get the BBC’s view on an issue. The PCC
Code and the NUJ Code are much shorter and so the principles involved can be
easily remembered and applied in everyday situations.
A good code needs to be unambiguous. No one wants to spend time agonising
over what a code clause means, with a deadline rushing towards them. It needs to
say clearly and concisely what is expected of the professional so that there is no need
for a debate over every story. This universalisation was identified as an important
element of a categorical imperative by Kant and it is no surprise that a good clause
should be qualified as little as possible.
A code that is clear and unambiguous is also important when it comes to policing.
A regulatory body such as the PCC needs to be able to decide whether a publication
has breached the code and not be deciphering what the code means. A clear code
makes policing much easier. As with all rules and law, a regulatory authority cannot
tell why someone adhered to or broke the code of conduct (although they might be
able to make a good guess) but the advantage of a code is that, properly written, a
professional is bound to have behaved ethically if they follow the code. For instance,
it is very difficult to castigate someone for upholding a rule that says they should
keep promises. There might well be good reasons for breaking a promise, but it is
much more difficult to justify breaking a promise than it is to justify sticking by a
rule to keep your promises whatever the final outcome happens to be. In the same
way, while we might tell what some people call white lies to our friends about how
they look, no one can accuse us of being immoral if we say we always tell the truth.
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Codes of conduct
The development of codes

The first codes of conduct were drafted in the USA in the early part of this century.
Britain and other European countries followed in the 1920s and 1930s. The British
NUJ Code was first suggested in 1935 and eventually launched in 1936 (Bundock,
1957). However, one of the first European countries to start to develop a code was
Sweden.
The Publicists Club [of Sweden], which was founded in 1874 with journalists, newspaper editors
and other publishers as its members, had, on a number of occasions in the beginning of the 1900s,
served as a self-appointed tribunal to hear complaints against newspapers. (Nordlund 1991: 2)
The Swedish Press Council was formed on 16 March 1916 at a joint meeting of
the Board of Publicists Club, the Swedish Newspaper Publishers Association and the
Swedish Journalists Association (now the Swedish Union of Journalists).
In the early stages, codes were relatively brief, consisting of a few paragraphs or
so and covering some basic principles. However, with the massive growth of tele-
vision and radio broadcasting during and after the Second World War, codes came
to be seen as more important. Separate codes were set up for print and broadcast
journalists in the UK and many other countries. Although the basic moral principles
underlying the type of information to be used and how it is gathered remain much
the same for print and broadcast journalists, their application, as we will see later
in this chapter, is often very different.
In Britain, independent television and radio were, until recently, covered by three
regulatory bodies: the Independent Television Commission (ITC) for TV or the
Radio Authority for radio which dealt with broadcasting licences and produced
guidelines for commercial broadcasters; the Broadcasting Standards Council (BSC)
which adjudicated on complaints of taste and decency; and the Broadcasting
Complaints Commission (BCC) which looked most closely at ethical issues as they
affect journalists. The Broadcasting Act 1996 combined the BCC and the BSC into
a new Broadcasting Standards Commission that started work in January 1998 with
a new code of practice. All this was swept away with the Communications Act
2003. This handed all these powers to the Office of Communications (Ofcom)
which now has the power to allocate licences for TV and radio and other communi-
cation channels as well as providing a framework for complaints and contents codes
for broadcasting in all its forms, including the internet.
Broadcasting codes, which had always needed to be longer and more detailed
than print codes because of the legislative structure they were obliged to work
within, began to grow and what had been just a few paragraphs in the early codes
often became several pages with many detailed clauses. The main reason for this
was that professional media bodies were determined to account for every situation
that could arise that might result in public outrage. However, conversely, the more
complex the codes became the easier it became for the media to wriggle around the
words therein. It is difficult to convince people determined to stamp out ‘media
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Building codes 251
excesses’ that a short code is often better as a method of control than the long,
detailed rambling one that many codes have now become.
A short code has the advantage of being easier for journalists to remember and
use. They are able to measure directly their performance against the principles con-
tained in the code and quickly realise when they are straying from the straight and
narrow. For instance, ‘thou shalt not steal’ only becomes difficult to operate when
it is hedged with a number of sub-clauses detailing what is meant under specific cir-
cumstances by ‘thou’, ‘shalt’ and ‘steal’. Similarly, in journalism, if a code says
‘journalists shall not represent comment as fact’ all journalists would be able to use
that to measure their behaviour even though they would not all come to the same
conclusions in similar cases. One person’s comment might be seen only as analysis,
and interpretation by another.
Codes are often now more concerned with practicalities than with principles. The
Swedish code of conduct, for instance, consists of 19 short paragraphs covering many
of the main issues. The British NUJ Code of Conduct (Appendix 2) covers most
issues in 14 fairly terse paragraphs. The British PCC Code of Practice (Appendix 1),
however, requires a weighty 45 paragraphs in 16 clauses with 6 paragraphs of intro-
duction to cover fewer issues. The Ofcom code, introduced in July 2005, has 10
sections, each of which typically has 15 clauses and as many as 28 in some cases
(http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes/bcode (accessed 14/6/06)). This again makes it
a code that can only be used as a reference source. It is too long for anyone to
remember and therefore be fully aware of all the ground it is trying to cover.
The outcome is that the longer codes are now too long to be of use to editors and
journalists who do not have time to refer to the code every time an issue comes up.
Editors and journalists then have to rely on an understanding of the basic ethical
principles, something they were rarely given during training. A short direct code,
which they would have time to use, would give journalists guidance on the issues.
Building codes
There tends to be a fair measure of agreement worldwide about what should be in

a code and these elements are usually grouped into two main types of clauses. These
are either rights-based or functions-based. The rights-based clauses deal with such
things as privacy, confidential sources and accuracy: what people have a right to
expect from journalists. The functional elements outline how journalists should
behave in order to perform well as journalists. This would also include accuracy and
how the information is presented. The main elements of a code are as follows:
• Gathering information;
• Dealing with contacts and sources;
• Publishing the information;
• Presentation of the information;
• Guaranteeing its quality;
• Dealing with complaints.
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These can be split into rights-based elements and functions-based elements.
Rights-based elements of codes
These spring from the human rights that underpin democratic societies and are
accepted by the European Convention and the United Nations Declaration on
Human Rights.
Freedom of expression is the first right that most journalists consider. This gives
the media the right to publish material and the freedom of the media springs from
this. However, most journalists and journalism codes take this further, converting
this right into a duty for the practitioner. Not only does the journalist, and by exten-
sion, the media, have a right to free expression, but the citizen has a right to receive
such outpourings of free expression. From this many people claim the public have a
right to know. However this is not a right that can be guaranteed and is really a
shorthand way of saying that people have a right to receive information, should
anyone be interested in presenting it to them. From this we can make it an ethical
duty of journalists to be the ones to ensure they do receive such information and
that it is a journalist’s job to protect the freedom of the media. So, many codes have
the duty to defend press freedom contained within them. The PCC’s Code for
instance, talks about ‘protecting both the rights of the individual and the public’s
right to know’ (http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html (accessed 14/6/06)). The
NUJ’s Code also has a clause insisting that journalists protect freedom of the press:
‘A journalist shall at all times defend the principle of the freedom of the Press and
other media in relation to the collection of information and the expression of
comment and criticism’ (NUJ Rulebook, 2005).
Privacy is another human right that is now also protected within codes of
conduct. However, it is entirely possible that employing one’s right to freedom of
expression could easily breach another’s right to privacy. A mechanism needs to be
developed that allows the balancing of these rights. The public interest will be dis-
cussed later.
Presumption of innocence and fair trial are other rights that need to be balanced
against freedom of speech. If someone is to get a fair trial and be presumed inno-
cent until that has happened, then there may need be limits put on what is written
about that person before their trial. Comments about whether they are believed to
be innocent or guilty could easily prevent them getting a fair trial and certainly
prevent them being presumed innocent, but preventing their publication could inter-
fere with freedom of expression.
Liberty and security are rights that might limit the reporter’s pursuit of an inter-
view and might also lead to a reporter being careful about the publication of
addresses or information about a person’s whereabouts. The right not be discrimi-
nated against, and the right to a reputation are other rights that are often included
within a code of conduct. In the case of the UK, reputation, presumption of inno-
cence, fair trial and discrimination are all included in the law.
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Public interest 253
Functions-based elements of codes
Truth and accuracy are the first functions-based elements of a code. Freedom of
expression and freedom to receive information do not contain a right to only receive
truthful information. It is up to the consumer to sort out which source can be
trusted and therefore which information is truthful. The same is true about
comment. However, it is clear that an ethical journalist will be one who is aiming
to tell the truth and to minimise subjective reporting by avoiding comment. The
taking of bribes, protecting sources and methods of newsgathering are all matters
for the individual reporter to work on with the help of the code because these also
obviously affect the truthfulness of the reporter and the trustworthiness of their
reporting. However, these are functional elements of ethics, not rights-based – there
can’t be a right not to take bribes, nor can there be a right for people to expect
reporters not to take bribes. People can expect reporters not to take bribes because
good reporters tell the truth and cannot tell the truth if they are taking bribes or
being influenced in other ways.
Taste and decency also covers a range of issues which are not rights-based but
clearly need to be considered. Print codes rarely mention taste and decency. The
ability to print pictures or text that might cause offence is so widely open to
interpretation and is so dependent on social pressure, audience and community
mores that newspapers and magazine codes such as that of the PCC ignore the issue.
This is not the case for broadcasters who have to be much more careful about what
they transmit. This fits with the general view that TV and radio are piped into
people’s homes and that representations of nudity, sex, bad language and violence
should be carefully edited. The UK’s obscenity laws also limit what can be published
and so there has been a long tradition in the UK about the publication of material
that might offend. Other countries take a different view about what is acceptable to
be broadcast. Some European countries are far more liberal in their interpretation
of what is acceptable than the UK, whilst the USA is often far more conservative
than even the UK. Some Muslim countries are more prepared to show pictures of
violence and death than the UK, but less prepared to show nudity and sex.
Public interest
All codes require a mechanism that allows practitioners to balance the constraints
they face under the code with their right to freedom of expression. Freedom of
expression allows journalists to say what they want, but limits must be arranged to
avoid invading someone else’s privacy, reputation, right to a fair trial, or to prevent
them being offended by what we publish, without a good reason.
That mechanism is the ‘public interest’ – a poorly defined device that allows prac-
titioners to consider breaching the rights of individuals or groups for the wider
benefit of the public at large. These can be difficult decisions to make and it is at this
point that we switch from the deontological approach and need to start analysing
the consequences of our actions. We start to insert caveats: it is wrong to invade
JOUR_C15.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 254
someone’s private life unless it is in the public interest. This requires the practitioner
to attempt to measure whether the damage done to the individual is outweighed by
the benefit to the majority. Some codes try to identify what we mean by the public
interest. The PCC Code for instance says:
1. The public interest includes, but is not confined to:
(i) Detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety.
(ii) Protecting public health and safety.
(iii) Preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or
organisation.
2. There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself.
(http://www.pcc.org.uk/cop/practice.html (accessed 16/6/06))
So, if a reporter decides that the only way to expose the unhygienic practices of
a food processing plant (a danger to the public that could lead to the illness and
possible death of many of the customers of the plant) is to get a job in the plant by
deceit and film the illegal practices (thus breaching the terms and conditions of the
new employment), then those immoral acts of deceit and breach of contract must be
justified in some way and the only way available for the journalist is to show that
they are in the public interest. The public interest is to bring the company’s shoddy
practices into the public domain so that the public can decide for themselves
whether to eat food produced in a way that is a danger to their general health and
safety. Without the defence of public interest, all that has happened is that the
reporter has indulged in a series of immoral, perhaps illegal, practices by getting a
job by deceit, lying to his new ‘employer’, breaching his duty of confidentiality and
potentially defrauding money (in wages). This is a lot of immoral behaviour to be
justified by the public interest.
Although codes are there to be changed by circumstance, any change to a code
means that the way practitioners will behave is changed. It is also not always poss-
ible to determine how a seemingly small change might alter the behaviour of the
whole industry. For instance, the redefining of clauses about children in the PCC’s
Code over a period of about thirteen years has led to a quite clear change in the way
that the media covers issues surrounding children. The PCC had been particularly
effective in protecting the privacy of children (Frost 2004: 101–14). However, this,
combined with fears of paedophile attacks and antisocial behaviour has meant that
media coverage of children as achievers and role models has almost disappeared in
the UK.
Codes and professionals
Codes of conduct are introduced into any professional area to give moral guidance.
‘They serve an important purpose by setting standards against which conduct can
be measured and evaluated’ (Gordon et al. 1998: 69). It has been argued above that
to be effective, a good code needs to offer easy guidance to the people who actually
need to use it. But, as we have seen, as codes have developed they have become
JOUR_C15.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 255
Codes and professionals 255
Exhibit 15.1 Amendments to the P C C Code of Practice

By June 2006 the British PCC Code of Practice had been amended almost thirty times
since its inception in 1991 to include:
• Additional paragraph in preamble on the reprinting of adjudications.
• Postscript inviting comments from the public.
• Clause on listening devices.
• Requirement for swift cooperation by editors inserted in preamble.
• Long-lens cameras included in privacy clause.
• Definition of private property inserted.
• Addition to editor’s responsibility in harassment clause.
• Payment for articles clause reworded.
• Addition of rules to prevent jigsaw identification in child sex cases.
• Consolidation of the definition of a public interest defence.
• Reference to private property definition added to harassment clause.
• ‘Responsible official’ changed to ‘responsible executive’ in hospital clause.
• Alteration to definition of private property.
• Alteration to wording of clause on children in sex cases.
• Rewritten sections, particularly on intrusion and privacy, following the death of
Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.
• Witness payments in trials.
• Another substantial rewrite in June 2004 as part of the new proposal for ‘permanent
evolution’ of the code.
• The inclusion of transgender people in the discrimination clause.
• A clause on suicide added.
longer and more complex and one of the problems journalists face is not so much
whether they abide by the code of conduct (either the NUJ’s Code of Conduct or
the PCC’s Code of Practice), but whether they know what it says. It is easy to be
dismissive of a code of conduct if it is too long and contains complex and difficult-
to-follow clauses about ethical matters that rarely interfere with the average
journalist’s business. For instance, a clause about gaining interviews only by
straightforward means is more likely to be remembered, and therefore acted on,
than more detailed, but often less used, clauses about seeking permission of an
authorised person before entering a hospital (see Appendix 1). Imagine a journalist
bursting into a private nursing-home bedroom wearing a borrowed white coat and
trying to obtain an interview from a seriously ill patient while pretending to be a
doctor. He or she would be less likely to breach a code clause discussing inter-
viewing only in straightforward ways than a specific clause banning the interviewing
of people in hospitals without the authority of hospital personnel. The first clause
goes to the heart of the issue whereas the second might merely spark a debate about
who an authorised person may be.
Keeping it simple gives the journalist more chance to think about the issues in real
situations and less chance of ignoring the issues altogether in an attempt to wriggle
JOUR_C15.QXP 8/2/07 10:55 Page 256
around weak wording. A study of recent regulatory authority breaches of codes

shows that a significant number are caused by ignorance rather than wilfulness.
Reasonable training about basic issues linked with a short easy-to-remember code
are the best tools for ensuring compliance to accepted standards.
JOUR_C16.QXP 8/2/07 10:53 Page 257
Chapter 16
R E G U LATI O N SYSTE M S
I N TH E U K
This chapter outlines the regulatory systems in use in the U K,

including:
• UK media law
• The Press Complaints Commission
• The Office of Communications
As we have discussed in Chapter 12, there are a number of ways in which the media
can be regulated. The UK uses the law coupled with statutory regulation and self-
regulation. Because of its history and development most regulation of broadcasting
is handled by the law and the statutory regulation that spins from it. The press con-
tends with either the law or self-regulation.
The law
The law is used fairly extensively in the UK to regulate the media. The introduction
of the Human Rights Act in 1998 guaranteed freedom of expression, thought and
opinion for the first time in the UK and this extends to guarantee the freedom of the
press, but it also gives a right to privacy for the first time and this has led to a devel-
oping area of law discussed elsewhere in this book.
The law has long been used in the UK, as elsewhere, to guarantee three human
rights: the right to a reputation, the right to a fair trial and the right to presumption
of innocence. The right to reputation is covered by the laws of defamation.
The law is the blunt instrument of regulation, as likely to damage those restricted
by it as help those it was intended to support. It comes in two flavours: civil and
criminal. The criminal law is prosecuted by the police while civil offences require
the injured party to pursue the case. The law is used as a regulator for a number of
issues in the UK. Those covered by criminal law include: fair trial, obscenity and
control of information particularly about children and state security. Reputation,
confidential information and copyright are civil issues where the injured party must
pursue their grievance direct to the courts.
Fair trial and the presumption of innocence are tightly protected by the law in the
UK. Once an arrest has been made in criminal proceedings, there are very strict rules
about what can be written until the trial and then there is careful control about what
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258 1 6 • Regulation systems in the UK
can be written during the trial. These rules are designed to ensure that juries come
to the trial with no preconceived notions about the defendant. They also ensure that
once the trial is under way, the media reports are fair, accurate and contempora-
neous. In that way, protection is offered under the law to the publication or
broadcaster from libel suits whilst the accused is assured of a fair report that will
not influence a jury. The law on what can and can’t be reported is complicated and
it is not my intention to cover it fully here – full details can be found in any good
media law book such as Frances Quinn’s Law for Journalists (forthcoming) –
however, this is one area of UK law which attempts to control journalistic ethics.
Taste and decency is another area where limits are set by the Obscenity Acts. The
Obscene Publications Act 1959 limits what can be written or displayed. The Act
bars any material ‘that tends to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having
regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or hear the matter contained or
embodied in it’ (Obscene Publications Act 1959). This definition rarely troubles
newspapers or TV and radio news broadcasts, so most taste and decency issues are
not regulated by the law in the UK, but it is worth remembering that it is possible
to face a charge of publishing obscene material. There are other areas of the law that
often impinge on what an editor may publish in his or her newspaper, but many of
these are rarely about the editorial. Adverts for psychics or patent remedies are con-
trolled as are gambling and the sale of guns, but few of these are to do with
journalistic ethical questions. The Newspaper Society’s website has some excellent
advice on these issues and is worth creating a shortcut to it on any editor’s computer
desktop.
Most of the other areas of legal restriction are covered by civil law. By far the
most important of these, certainly in the UK, is the defence of reputation, a gener-
ally accepted human right. Protection of personal honour is upheld in virtually every
country around the world in one way or another. Usually this is defended by the
civil suit of libel. This allows the person whose reputation is under attack to sue in
the courts. In the UK such a suit must prove that the complainant is the person men-
tioned in the story and that that story defames them in some way. This means they
must prove that the words written or broadcast would tend ‘to lower the claimant
in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally’ (Sim v Stretch 1936
cited in Crone 2002: 3).
In the UK, the complainant does not need to prove the words are untrue, merely
that they are defamatory. However, if the defendant can prove the defamatory words
are true, that may be a defence to the suit. More usually, a publication would defend
the alleged libel on the basis that the comments were based on true facts and were
fair comment. The fair comment defence allows freedom of expression and opinion,
provided the comments were made without malice. The law of libel in the USA is
much more interested in whether malice was involved and the complainant not only
has to prove that the words were defamatory, but also that the falsehoods were made
maliciously. It is worth noting, that under the law, malice may mean that the remarks
were made recklessly or without any regard to whether they were true or not.
Another area where the law has something to say on how journalists gather the
news is the obtaining or protection of information. The Freedom of Information Act
JOUR_C16.QXP 8/2/07 10:53 Page 259
The law 259
2000 gives considerable rights to access information from public bodies including
the government. On the other hand, the Data Protection Act 1989 limits access to
information of a personal nature that is held about people. Because the Data
Protection Act gives some protection for individuals, it is no longer so easy to get
the names and addresses of those involved in accidents or admitted to hospital. The
police and hospital authorities are prevented from giving out ‘sensitive personal
data’ to journalists or a senior officer without the permission of the data subject. It
has to be said that this is a clause that is widely used by many authorities as some-
thing to hide behind rather than as a protection of the individual, and information
is often withheld improperly, with officers claiming this is because of the Data
Protection Act. It is worth reminding ourselves at this point that the DPA does not
prevent a journalist using such information if it can be obtained legally elsewhere:
it is only a legal obligation on the data holder to keep the information secret, the
information is not necessarily secret of itself. The law only requires that information
collected for the purpose of record-keeping is used only for that one purpose and no
other. So, a person admitted to hospital after a road accident might well have their
data protected by the registering official and any other member of staff working at
the hospital, but a visitor or relative who is prepared to give information would be
exempt and can give the journalist the information he or she requires.
Laws protecting the public or the state include the Official Secrets Act, the
various Terrorism Acts, and other statutes designed to protect secure installations
or the armed forces or security services. Terrorism Acts in the UK are not only
designed to prevent acts of terrorism but also require journalists and others to pass
information they receive to the authorities. This means it is an offence in the UK for
a journalist to receive information about an alleged terrorist act without then
informing the police about it.
The vulnerable are protected with the various pieces of hate legislation. Children
are protected by a number of Acts, starting with the Children and Young Persons
Act 1933. More recent Acts offer children anonymity through the courts whether
they are witnesses, victims or the accused. Family courts, which deal with custody
and such matters also carry out their work largely in private in order to protect the
children involved, although at the time of writing, the government was considering
substantial change in this area to allow for wider coverage of such cases (while
keeping names confidential) so that the issues involved could be discussed in the
public arena without making personal issues public. There is also a discussion about
coroners’ courts for similar reasons. The Divorce Acts have limited the reporting of
divorce in order to reduce the publication of salacious detail and there is also a limit
on industrial tribunals involving sexual misconduct for similar reasons. Under the
Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Act 1993, an Employment Tribunal
can order that the employee or the employer, or both, or any other witnesses or
parties to the case, cannot be identified. Anonymity is not automatic and each party
will be given an opportunity to speak on the application. However, the Press does
not have the right to speak. Tribunal cases do sometimes contain evidence of sexual
misconduct when a person, usually a woman, has left her job after being sexually
harassed. Giving evidence of such conduct, which will have involved not only the
JOUR_C16.QXP 8/2/07 10:53 Page 260
conduct itself but the loss of a job, is a terrible ordeal and many former employees
seek such a restricted reporting order when complaining of sexual misconduct. The
Law of Confidence is another growing area of law used in the context of the media
to protect against invasions of privacy.
Regulatory authorities
There are several regulatory councils in the UK charged with controlling the media
and guarding media standards. All but two have statutory powers. The exceptions
are the voluntary Press Complaints Commission, set up by the print media to police
a code of practice, and the NUJ’s Ethics Council, set up by the union to educate
journalists in ethics and to police its Code of Conduct.
Press
Press regulation is covered either by the law or by self-regulatory bodies: the Press
Complaints Commission, professional bodies such as the NUJ and internal
company regulation.
The Press Complaints Commission

The PCC was set up following the first Calcutt report solely to resolve complaints.
Calcutt’s recommendation that the Commission should not become involved in
press freedom issues was regretted by the old Press Council. It felt that to seek to
adjudicate on complaints that were not measured against the need for press freedom
was to leave the media vulnerable to censorship. Despite these regrets, the old Press
Council shut its doors in December 1990 and the PCC took up the reins in January
1991 under the leadership of Lord McGregor of Durris who had chaired the
1974–77 Royal Commission on the Press and was chairman of the Advertising
Standards Authority. The PCC is funded by Pressbof (the press board of finance), a
body set up by newspaper publishers’ organisations after the publication of the
Calcutt report. It raises finance from publishers to pay for the PCC and appoints the
PCC chairman. The members of the Press Complaints Commission are selected by
the Appointments Commission, which has five members: the PCC chairman, three
members nominated by the PCC chairman and the chairman of Pressbof. The nom-
inated members each serve for four years.
There are seventeen members of the Commission, including the chairman. Seven
of these are the press members, who should be working editors or senior journalists
in executive positions. The independent members cannot be involved with, or
interested in, the business of publishing newspapers, periodicals or magazines. Since
2003, the new independent members have been appointed following an open adver-
tising procedure. Press adverts invite people to apply for the position and the
appointments committee makes the final decision.
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Press 261
The PCC does not normally initiate enquiries and does not require a legal waiver
from complainants. Under the old Press Council, a legal waiver had prevented com-
plainants going on to sue the newspaper through the courts, using a council
judgment in their favour as evidence. The PCC judges complaints against a code of
practice drawn up by a committee of editors nominated by Pressbof.
How the PCC works

The PCC is a lay committee, with a small professional secretariat to service it. As
well as dealing with complaints, the PCC advises editors before publication.
According to Lord Wakeham, who took over as chairman of the PCC in January
1995, more and more editors sought the advice of the PCC on particular stories or
the approach to particular stories before publication during the 1990s. The hotline
to the PCC was established shortly after Wakeham took over at the PCC. McGregor
had not been keen on the idea, as he feared it smacked of prior restraint. This pre-
publication advice has continued during Sir Christopher Meyer’s chairmanship, and
staff at the Commission advise that it is an important part of their work these days.
The PCC also has an important role to play in providing material on self-
regulation and the Code of Practice for trainee journalists and students. It lists
several speakers on its website who will visit colleges or local community groups to
discuss the PCC and its role. It also holds occasional open days in major cities
around the country, puts advertisements in newspapers and magazines, using space
donated by the publishers and participates at conferences. A helpline is also avail-
able to the public on 0845 600 2757 (0131 220 6652 in Scotland, 0292 039 5570
in Wales). An average of 120 calls a week were received in 1995, and in the 2005
report the PCC said it still deals with hundreds of calls, including a number of
requests for journalists from newspapers and magazines to desist from asking ques-
tions, following or photographing people. The PCC offers general guidance to
editors on its website (http://www.pcc.org.uk/advice/editorials.html (accessed
23/7/06)). This includes such matters as refugees and asylum seekers, court
reporting or paedophiles.
How to complain
The PCC issues guidance on its website to would-be complainants. A complaint
should be sent to the Commission, where a decision is taken on whether the matter
presents a possible breach of the Code of Conduct. It is here that the importance of
the Code becomes clear. Only if the Code is potentially breached can a complaint
be considered.
The editor of the publication is then sent a copy of the complaint and it is
suggested that he or she deals with it direct. This can often be done with a correc-
tion, some form of right of reply or an apology. If the matter is resolved to
everyone’s satisfaction at this stage, the PCC would not normally pursue it further.
If the situation is not resolved, the Commission would go on to adjudicate the com-
plaint. If the complaint is upheld, the publication is obliged to print the full text of
JOUR_C16.QXP 8/2/07 10:53 Page 262
the adjudication. If the complaint is dismissed, then no further action is taken. In

both cases, the complainant is sent full copies of the adjudication.
The PCC attempts to deal with complaints as quickly as possible. It will normally
only deal with complaints made within one month of publication or within one
month of a reply from an editor to whom a complaint had been made. It will also
not normally deal with third-party complaints, that is, complaints made by someone
not directly involved in the complaint. The PCC will approach the subject of the
story, if it does decide to follow up a third-party complaint, to seek his or her cooper-
ation and will normally drop the proceedings if that person does not wish to become
involved. If the complaint is about a story that involves litigation, then the PCC will
normally wait until proceedings are over before proceeding with the complaint.
Types of complaint
All figures in the following section are abstracted from the appropriate PCC Annual
Report. The PCC received 3,654 complaints in 2005 – 36 more than in 2004. The
number of complaints made during the 1990s varied between 2,500 and just over
3,000, but after 2003, complaints increase markedly to around 3,600. The
Commission said in 1997 that it believed the increase in complaints to that date was
due to increasing awareness rather than falling standards. No attempt was made by
the Commission in its 1998 Annual Report to explain the substantial fall in com-
plaints that occurred in that year (down from 2,944 to 2,505). Over the first fourteen
years, nearly 61 per cent of those complaints were not pursued as they were either
third-party complaints (outside the remit of the PCC), disallowed because of unjusti-
fied delays or not seen as prima facie breaches of the Code. The number of
third-party complaints which were not pursued rose dramatically in 1997 (the year
of the Princess of Wales’ death) from 146 to 335, but fell again to 205 in 1998. Those
complaints that fell outside the Commission’s remit concerned advertising material,
contractual disputes or matters of taste. About 3 per cent fell because of undue
delays. Only 73 per cent of complaints were concluded over the fourteen years.
Most of the remaining complaints were resolved within a few days, after the
editors concerned published an apology, correction or, occasionally, offered the
complainant an opportunity to reply. The PCC sees this as a success area and says
in its 2005 report:
The most notable headline figure, in terms of complaints statistics for 2005, is not the 3,654
complaints the PCC received over the course of the year, although that is (by 5 complaints) the
highest in the Commission’s history. It is the increase by more than 40% in the number of
complaints that were resolved following offers from publications: the highest ever number of
resolved complaints in the fifteen-year history of the PCC.
(http://www.pcc.org.uk/assets/111/PCC_Annual_Review2005.pdf (accessed 23/7/06))
Some complaints fell, as they were not followed up by complainants. This left a
total of 30 complaints for 2005 (34 in 2004) which were adjudicated on by the
Commission; 8 (11 in 2004) of these complaints were upheld. (See Table 16.1 for a
breakdown of these figures.)
JOUR_C16.QXP
Table 17.1 PCC complaints
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
8/2/07
No prima facie breach of code 347 584 704 914 1026 897 914 954 942 857 921 711 593 549 554
Disallowed as from third party 0‡ 107 114 87 77 146 335 205 0 0 157 163 581 138 160
Resolved with editor 72 182 231 356 413 393 514 555 650 544 923 1052 1602 417 565
10:53
Disallowed for delay 46 64 97 85 91 110 93 112 0 0 153 155 80 65 31

Outside remit 137 232 447 427 800 1125* 593 689 0 0 403 502 630 632 909
Adjudicated – upheld 32 31 40 34 28 27 34 45 26 24 19 17 11 8 11
rejected 28 49 57 54 35 54 48 41 23 33 22 19 12 26 19
Page 263
Total complaints 1,520 1,963 1,782 2,091 2,508 3,023 2,944 2,505 2,427 2,225 3,033 2,630 3,649 3,618 3,654
Notes:
1 These totals are as listed in the annual reports and bear no similarity with the totals produced by the PCC’s bulletins. No explanation is given in the annual
reports as to why there are differences, although one reason could be that the annual reports list complainants and the bulletins list complaints.
2 1991 sub-totals are for January–November only. There was no December 1991 report.
3 Adjudications in 2005 also include adjudications for the first three months of 2006.
* Includes Euro 1996 complaints.
‡ Third-party complaints were not listed separately in 1991.
Figures for 2005 include first three months of 2006.
Source: All figures are from the appropriate PCC Annual Report
Press
263
JOUR_C16.QXP 8/2/07 10:53 Page 264
As in previous years, the majority of the complaints received in 2005 (67.4 per
cent) were about accuracy, the right of reply or presenting comment as fact. It is dif-
ficult to make comparisons with the previous year’s as the PCC presents the
statistics in line with its Code of Practice. Since the new Code now combines accu-
racy and comment as fact in clause 1, and since statistically the PCC combines
clauses 1 and 2 (right of reply) figures in its Annual Report, direct comparisons are
difficult (see Figure 16.1 for comparisons). However, the 1998 Annual Report totals
accuracy, right of reply and comment at 70.3 per cent for 1997. In 1997, 3.6 per
cent of complaints were about the right to reply and 12.8 per cent were about con-
fusing comment as fact.
Only 12.5 per cent of the complaints in 2005 were related to privacy, a slight
increase from 2004. The Commission had appointed Professor Robert Pinker as the
Privacy Commissioner in 1995 to investigate privacy complaints but he was not
replaced in this role following his semi-retirement in 2004. The PCC said: ‘The
Commission is especially vigilant in cases involving intrusion into privacy, and
brings instances of severe or calculated breach of the Code to the attention of pub-
lishers in order that the need for appropriate disciplinary action may be considered’
(PCC, 1995: 7).
The PCC is very keen to trumpet its work as a conciliator to explain why so few
complaints end up in formal adjudication. ‘The PCC is highly successful in its role
as a conciliator. In 1997, just under 9 in 10 cases in which there was a case for the
newspaper to answer were resolved. This is higher than in previous years and under-
lines the increasingly effective way in which self-regulation and its informal methods
of conciliation work in the interests of the public. Achieving this high level of
resolved disputes would be impossible in a formal legal system’ (PCC, 1997: 8). This
means that resolving complaints has become the PCC’s main aim and the number
of adjudications has fallen dramatically over the years, despite a steep increase in
complaints. Table 16.1 shows how adjudications have fallen from a high in 1993,
when there were 1,782 complaints, despite 2005 producing more than double the
number of complaints. Only a fifth of the number of complaints dealt with in 2004
were upheld compared to that in 1998. This decrease in adjudications is illustrated
very clearly in Figure 16.2. Resolution of a complaint means the publication has
provided a correction, an apology or a reader’s letter, all things that the publication
could have done at the first complaint from a reader without the involvement of the
PCC. A more detailed analysis of the PCC’s performance can be found in Frost
(2004, 2006).
Third-party complaints
The PCC is only obliged to consider complaints from those directly affected.
However, the Commission may decide to consider a complaint from a third party.
It would normally do so only when the issue was of public interest. Because of the
way the PCC looks at complaints, the decision on whether it is a third-party com-
plaint is not taken until it is decided whether there is a prima facie breach of the
Code. An idea of the extent of the PCC’s dealings with third-party complaints can
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Press 265
70
60
50
40
Percentage
30
20
10
2004
2002
0 2000
1998
Accuracy
Privacy
Misrepresentation
1996
Children
Harassment
Discrimination
Reply
Intrusion
Comments
1994
Payments
Innocent relatives (reporting of crime)
Hospitals
Listening devices
Confidential
Sexual harassment
Finance
Payment to witnesses
Figure 16.1 PCC complaints by code clause

Source: Data from the PCC
be gained from an editorial in the PCC’s report of September 1992. Of 530 com-
plaints from third parties, only 12 made it to adjudication, with 50 per cent of those
being upheld. The Commission prints copies of all its adjudications in a regular
report. These used to be published monthly but in the last couple of years have been
produced every two or even three months and finally, from 2006, every six months.
This is partly because adjudications are now loaded onto the website as they are
made. There has been a significant change in the PCC’s approach to third-party
complaints though, over the years. The PCC’s traditional position of not taking
third-party complaints became more and more difficult to sustain as the number of
race complaints rose during the attacks on immigrants of the new millennium.
Papers such as the Daily Express consistently ran stories portraying refugees in a
way that many felt was racist, unfair and inaccurate. Slowly the PCC found itself
obliged to accept more and more third-party complaints and finally it subtlely, and
without publicity, redefined third-party to mean complaints involving a specific
subject that had been brought by another. Complaints about accuracy made over
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100
90
80
70
60
Percentage
50
40
30
20
10
0
1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Upheld Rejected
Figure 16.2 PCC adjudications

Source: Data from the PCC
stories that have no specific individual subject could now be complained about by
third parties, the PCC’s officers claimed.
Charter Compliance Panel

Another major change introduced in 2004 by the new chairman and flagged in the
2003 Select Committee’s report was the Charter Compliance Panel and the Charter
Commissioner. The commissioner, and chairman of the compliance panel, Sir Brian
Cubbon, is a former permanent secretary at the Home Office. At the time of writing,
its only other member was Dame Ruth Runciman, who is also chairman of the
Mental Health Act Commission.
The compliance panel is an independent audit committee that oversees the work
of the PCC. It examines cases at random and produces a report and recommen-
dations each year. It is not an appeal committee, but if complainants have
complaints about the way their complaint was handled, they can write to the
Charter Commissioner who will investigate and report any findings and recommen-
dations to the PCC.
Teenage Magazines Arbitration Panel

The Teenage Magazines Arbitration Panel was set up in 1996 to regulate the sexual
content of magazines, following concerns that teenage magazines contained overly-
specific sexual content. It has produced guidelines in consultation with the industry
and the Home Office.
TMAP aims to:
• provide an impartial forum for the adjudication of complaints
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• monitor adherence to the guidelines

• promote its work among the general public
• provide information and conduct research on the role of teenage magazines in the development
of adolescents
Complaints should first be sent to the magazine, but if no satisfactory response is

received, a complainant can write to TMAP. The chairman of TMAP, Dr Fleur Fisher,
defends the organisation, saying it is ‘the most closely regulated section of the mag-
azine industry’ (http://www.tmap.org.uk/cgi-bin/go.pl/news/article.html?uid=9726
(accessed 25/7/06)). Magazines are required to make it clear that any sexual contact
under the age of 16 is illegal. However, TMAP adjudicated only one complaint in
2005. This was against Sugar (12 April 2005) which carried an article about a young
woman in Zambia who, having lost her father, was forced by her sister and cousin
into prostitution at the age of 11 in order to feed the family. The complainant felt
that the magazine had not made it clear that selling one’s body for sex was illegal in
the UK (but not in Zambia). TMAP upheld the complaint on that basis, saying that
the article should have directly referred to underage sex being illegal in the UK. The
panel also said:
The Panel, in reaching their conclusion took into account a number of mitigating factors, most
notably the general tone of the article which warned of the emotional and physical horrors of
prostitution; that the article clearly set out the dangers of unprotected sex; and also the positive
impact of charities which enable people to regain control of their lives. The panel was keen to stress
the importance of magazines reflecting the lives of young girls in other parts of the world, and that
this article was praiseworthy in that respect. The Panel also noted that prostitution in Zambia is
not illegal. (http://www.tmap.org.uk/cgi-bin/wms.pl/668 (accessed 25/7/06))
The Competition Commission
The Competition Commission has only a very limited role in the regulation of the
media in that it is obliged to look at potential purchases, mergers or takeovers of
newspapers or magazines. There is special protection under the appropriate Act to
ensure that such proposed takeovers are fully considered in the light of the public
interest. Any such merger would be referred to the commission by the Secretary of
State under the Fair Trading Act 1973.
Broadcasting
The situation in broadcasting is far more complicated, as we might expect in a regu-

latory system supported by legislation. Broadcasting regulation has undergone a
number of major changes over the past decade. The Broadcasting Act 1980 set up
the Broadcasting Complaints Commission to adjudicate on complaints of unfair
treatment in television and radio programmes or of ‘unwarranted infringement of
privacy’. The Broadcasting Standards Council was launched in 1988, at the peak of
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one of the outcries of moral outrage which has so characterised the 1980s and
1990s, to deal with complaints from viewers and listeners about decency. Before the
introduction of these two bodies, complaints had been handled either by the BBC
Complaints Panel or the Independent Broadcasting Authority, as appropriate. The
Broadcasting Act 1990 changed that, introducing new regulatory and complaints
authorities. Control of broadcasting was lodged with the BBC (through its Charter),
the Independent Television Commission and the Radio Authority, whilst complaints
and conduct were dealt with by the BCC and the BSC. The BCC was never very
popular with broadcasters and few tears were shed when it was amalgamated with
the BSC by the Broadcasting Act 1996.
Major changes were introduced in the early part of the twenty-first century with
the introduction of a lighter-touch regulator to replace the ITC and the BSC.
Ofcom, the Office of Communications, amalgamated several bodies: The ITC, the
Radio Authority, the BSC, the Radiocommunications Agency and the Office of
Telecommunications. This brought regulatory bodies for electronic communication
in radio, TV and telephony all under the same authority. Only the BBC was able
to stand outside this huge new regulator, although some control of BBC areas is
lodged with Ofcom, which even has the power to comment on newspaper mergers
and takeovers.
Ofcom
The Office of Communications, known as Ofcom, is the new regulator for television
and radio in the UK (with some exceptions in the case of the BBC). This body was
constituted by the Office of Communications Act 2002 and gains its power from the
Communications Act 2003. It takes over from a number of regulators who used to
control radio, TV and telecommunications, including the Broadcasting Standards
Commission, Oftel, the Independent Television Commission and the Radio
Authority.
The Act says that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport should
appoint at least three and no more than six members to the Ofcom board, including
a chairman; in 2006, there was a board comprising the full six members, led by
Chairman David Currie and Deputy Chairman Philip Graf, a former chairman of
Pressbof. There is also an executive committee (Exco) with eleven members led by
Ed Richards, the chief executive.
Ofcom regulates television, radio, any other broadcast medium, telephones
(landlines and mobile) and any other high-speed data links. The convergence of
technologies such as the internet, high-definition TV, mobile phones and data links
have made distinctions between these seem highly artificial. We will soon be
receiving our TV over the web and our web on mobile phones as a matter of course
and these technologies will become indistinguishable. We will simply receive high-
quality digital data for display on high-definition screens or playback through
high-quality audio systems. It is this convergence that drives the Communications
Act 2003 and identifies Ofcom’s duties. Ofcom is obliged to further the interests
of:
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• citizens in relation to communications matters; and

• consumers in relevant markets, where appropriate by promoting competition.
It is there to further the interests of citizen-consumers through a regulatory
regime which, where appropriate, encourages competition. To do this, Ofcom says
it will:
• ‘encourage the evolution of electronic media and communications networks to
the greater benefit of all who live in the United Kingdom;
• support the need for innovators, creators and investors to flourish within
markets driven by full and fair competition between all providers;
• balance the promotion of choice and competition with the duty to foster
plurality, informed citizenship, the protection of viewers, listeners and
customers, and promote cultural diversity; and
• serve the interests of citizen-consumers as the communications industry enters
the digital age.’
The Act identifies two different types of audience: citizens and consumers. These
two have very different requirements, although they may well often be the same
people. The term ‘citizens’ is used to mean those who access broadcasting in its
public service role, whilst ‘consumers’ is used to mean customers who make choices
about their communication needs on the basis of payment for services used. Citizens
require a public service broadcasting system that entertains, informs and educates
and that is free at the point of reception. In order to serve these citizens, Ofcom
needs to ensure that services are available in all parts of the country and that recep-
tion is acceptable virtually everywhere. It also needs to ensure that minority interests
are reasonably catered for. In dealing with consumers, though, Ofcom can reason-
ably expect the market to operate and for high-cost services chosen by the customer
to be paid for by subscription or some other direct form of payment as well as indi-
rect payments such as advertising or sponsorship.
This means that Ofcom’s key duties include:
• controlling the use for wireless telegraphy of the electromagnetic spectrum;
• ensuring the availability throughout the United Kingdom of a wide range of
electronic communications services;
• ensuring the availability throughout the United Kingdom of a wide range of
television and radio services which are of high quality and calculated to appeal
to a variety of tastes and interests;
• the maintenance of a sufficient plurality of providers of different television and
radio services.
Ofcom also has a duty to ensure standards are applied to provide adequate protec-
tion from offensive and harmful material, from unfair treatment in programmes and
from unwarranted infringements of privacy (Communications Act 2003, Section
3(2)). Ofcom also has a duty to improve the public’s media literacy, by bringing
about better public understanding of the media, including what is published, how it
is selected and made available and its regulation and control.
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Ofcom controls a wide range of electronic spectrum including:

• Radio and television in the UK;
• Telephone lines including telephone numbers;
• Data links;
• Internet.
Ofcom is described as a light-touch regulator. It will only intervene when
necessary, but will otherwise allow the market to operate. It consults widely and
produces an annual plan, which is reviewed regularly. It will intervene when there
is a specific statutory requirement, but the Communications Act 2003 is much
vaguer about the need to intervene than previous Broadcasting Acts.
The BBC and the Welsh Authority, which controls S4C, are not directly con-
nected to Ofcom.
One of Ofcom’s major tasks over the next few years is to oversee the move to
digital TV and the switch-off of the analog system. At the moment, Ofcom plans to
switch over by ITV region, starting with Border in 2008. The switch-over will proceed
as follows:
2008 – Border
2009 – West Country, HTV Wales, Granada
2010 – HTV West, Grampian, Scottish Television
2011 – Yorkshire, Anglia, Central
2012 – Meridian, Carlton/LWT (London), Tyne Tees, Ulster
Ofcom delegates some of its regulatory powers to various boards and commit-
tees. These include advisory boards for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern
Ireland; advisory boards on the elderly and disabled people; the Community Radio
Fund Panel; the Radio Licensing Committee; the Fairness Committee; the Election
Committee; the Audit Committee; the Remuneration Committee; the Content Board
and the Content Sanctions Committee.
The Content Board is chaired by Ofcom’s deputy chairman and has twelve
members appointed by Ofcom, four of whom represent each of the countries within
the UK. The Content Board’s role is to:
• Examine the contents of anything that is broadcast or otherwise transmitted by
means of electronic communications networks; and
• promote public understanding or awareness of matters relating to the
publication of matter by means of the electronic media.
It also acts as an advisory board to the Ofcom Board.
The Ofcom Board has delegated the discharge of its functions in relation to
content-sanctions cases to a committee known as the Content Sanctions Committee,
chaired by the chair of Ofcom’s Content Board. The Content Sanctions Committee
considers cases referred to it by the executive for it to decide if there has been a
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Broadcasting 271
breach of the relevant code or licence and to consider a penalty if a sanction is

required. It will invite representation from the broadcaster, if a sanction is being
considered. The Committee consists of a maximum of five members, three from the
Content Board and two from the Ofcom Board.
Ofcom says it aims to deal quickly and simply with complaints about: phones,
internet service, TV/radio content, TV/radio advertising, digital TV availability and
TV/radio interference.
The Content Sanctions Committee has delegated powers to consider cases
referred to it by the executive about broadcasts made on independent radio or TV.
It decides on any sanction to be applied. Ofcom does not have the power to prevent
a broadcast before transmission, but it can levy a sanction against a breach of the
code. This could be a fine, suspension or revocation of the licence for serious and/or
repeated or deliberate offences. The Content Sanctions Committee has a number of
duties:
• to consider content or content-based cases referred to it by the executive for
consideration of a statutory sanction (including cases involving the BBC and
S4C);
• where the sanction under consideration includes a financial penalty or
shortening or revocation of a licence, to invite oral representations from
licensees;
• to decide whether to impose a statutory sanction and at what level, in
accordance with Ofcom’s Penalty Guidelines;
• to settle and approve decision letters to licensees;
• where such decisions are to be published, to settle and approve any press
releases in consultation with the Director of Communications or by delegation
to the Chairman, as appropriate.
(http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/csg/ocsc_index/ocsc_tor2/ (accessed 21/12/06))
The Content Sanctions Committee’s decisions are taken in line with the penalty
guidelines, but there is no right of appeal to Ofcom once the decision has been made.
The chairman of the Content Board is also the chairman of the Content Sanctions
Committee. The Broadcast Code is published under ten section heads covering:
Under-eighteens; Harm and offence; Crime; Religion; Impartiality and accuracy;
Elections; Fairness; Privacy; Sponsorship and Commercial references. Ofcom can
take complaints about all broadcasters but not complaints about accuracy or impar-
tiality on BBC TV and radio. Ofcom can only take a complaint about a programme
once that programme has been broadcast. It has no power of prior restraint. Once a
complaint has been made, either on the form available online, or by post or phone,
Ofcom will investigate. Ofcom aims to resolve complaints as fast as possible. The
Fairness Committee deals with complaints referred to it by the executive either on
grounds of complexity or where one of the parties is dissatisfied with decisions of the
executive.
At the time of writing, Ofcom had been operating for two years and had dealt
with around 20,000 complaints per year. One recent complaint about an item on
Channel 4’s Richard and Judy led to Channel 4 being fined £5,000, and directed to
JOUR_C16.QXP 8/2/07 10:53 Page 272
transmit Ofcom’s statement of finding. The show had broadcast an item about the
dangers of excessive caffeine intake in 2004. They then broadcast an apology and
correction followed by an item examining the benefits of caffeine, which the com-
plainants saw as a promotion of Red Bull. Ofcom agreed and sanctioned the
programme.
In another complaint Key 103 FM in Manchester was fined £125,000 and
directed to broadcast Ofcom’s statement of findings at 17.00, 20.00 and 23.00 daily
for a week. Ofcom had received six complaints that four late-night phone-in pro-
grammes hosted by James Stannage had contained offensive jokes about the death
of Kenneth Bigley, offensive references to Muslims, alleged incitement to racial
hatred and racist comments.
Ofcom and the BBC

Ofcom is responsible for some areas of the BBC’s work. It has the power to regu-
late the following:
• Protecting the under-eighteens;
• Harm and offence;
• Crime;
• Religion;
• Fairness;
• Privacy.
Complaints can go to the BBC, but complainants can also complain to Ofcom.
British Broadcasting Corporation

The BBC is Britain’s most easily identified public service broadcaster, with an aim
to inform, educate and entertain. With the renewal of its Royal Charter and
Agreement on 1 May 1996, the BBC was required to draw up a code on a range of
ethical issues. The Charter also placed a duty on the BBC Board of Governors to
ensure that the BBC’s employees and programme-makers comply with it, giving the
governors similar powers to those then held by the Independent Television
Commission. A new Charter was introduced in December 2006. This took the
changes further and the government’s proposals for the new charter are discussed
further on in this chapter.
The Agreement, a formal contract between the BBC and the Secretary of State for
National Heritage (now Culture, Media and Sport), runs concurrently with the
Royal Charter and explains how the BBC is to meet its broad objectives and duties.
It formally guarantees its editorial independence in programme content, scheduling
and management. It also means the licence fee will remain the primary source of
finance for the BBC for the duration of the charter.
The twelve members of the Board of Governors are appointed by the Queen in
Council to monitor the BBC’s performance and standards against set objectives. A
new chairman of the Board of Governors, Michael Grade, and Director-General,
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Broadcasting 273
Mark Thompson, took up office in 2004 following the resignation of Greg Dyke
and Sir Christopher Bland over the Hutton report.
The BBC’s Executive Committee, whose members also sit on the broader-based
Board of Management, is led by the director-general, Mark Thompson, who had
previously been Chief Executive of Channel 4. He had previously worked at the
BBC for more than 20 years, becoming Director of Television in 2000.
The new BBC Charter replaces the Governors with the BBC Trust and the
Executive Committee with the Executive Board. The Trust’s role is to set the overall
strategic direction for the BBC, while the Executive Board runs the BBC.
Regulation in the BBC

The Editorial Guidelines, the BBC’s ethical ‘bible’, contains thirty-seven different
sections, but the main ones that concern us here are contained in the BBC’s
‘Values and Standards, Issues in Factual Programming and Politics’. They cover
the following issues: impartiality and accuracy, fairness to contributors, privacy
and the gathering of information, taste and decency, violence, imitative and anti-
social behaviour, portrayal of children in programmes, and conflicts of interest.
‘Issues in factual programming’ include interviewing, reporting crime, relations
with the police, confidentiality and the release of programme material, terrorism
and national security, Northern Ireland, and material from outside sources.
‘Politics’ covers politics, Parliament and politicians, broadcasting during elections,
and opinion polls. Finally, ‘commercial issues in programmes’ include commercial
relationships, support services, covering outside events, on-air references to prod-
ucts, services and publications, using free or reduced-cost facilities, competitions,
prizes and coverage of the National Lottery, premium-rate telephone services,
charities, and charity appeals. All recorded programmes are required to complete
a compliance form that shows the programme was made in compliance with the
editorial guidelines.
The BBC takes complaints about its programmes through its Editorial Complaints
Unit. This investigates alleged breaches of the editorial guidelines. If the ECU upholds
the complaint, it will instruct the programme to take action to correct the error and
prevent the same mistake happening again (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editori-
alguidelines/edguide/accountability/editorialcompla.shtml (accessed 25/7/06)). The
BBC received more than 32,000 complaints in the first quarter of 2006. These ranged
from concerns about the showing or not showing of the cartoons depicting the
Prophet Muhammad to the ending of the UK Theme on Radio 4. The ECU aims to
deal with most complaints within twenty working days.
Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee

The Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee (ESC) is responsible for fulfilling the
Charter requirement ‘to ensure that complaints are properly handled by BBC man-
agement’. It considers appeals from complainants about programmes transmitted, or
material carried, by the BBC’s domestic public services on radio, television and online.
JOUR_C16.QXP 8/2/07 10:53 Page 274
If a complainant is unhappy about the response made by the ECU, then he or she can
appeal to the ESC. The ESC reports its activities to the Trust and is required to handle
complaints promptly and ensure they are investigated rigorously and impartially.
Where a complaint is upheld, the BBC not only apologises for the breach in pro-
gramme standards but takes remedial action to guard against the breach
occurring again and/or to discipline individuals responsible for the breach. The
BBC now has a code of practice on complaints that came into force in February
2005 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complaints_process.shtml#code).
Editorial Guidelines
The BBC’s Editorial Guidelines have developed out of the old producer guidelines
and were published in 2005. They are now very firmly an online resource, available
to producers, journalists and the public alike at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/edi-
torialguidelines/edguide/. They are advertised as the distillation, if not the wisdom,
of generations of producers and editors. The guidelines are structured around a
number of headings;
Accuracy
Impartiality & Diversity of Opinion
Fairness, Contributors & Consent
Privacy
Crime & Anti-Social Behaviour
Harm & Offence
Children
Politics & Public Policy
War, Terror & Emergencies
Religion
Editorial Integrity & Independence
External Relationships
Interacting with our Audiences
The Law
Accountability
Ofcom Broadcasting Code
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/edguide/)
Each of these hyperlinks leads into a detailed set of sub-headings which them-
selves offer considerable advice in a wide variety of areas. This is not a code of
conduct: it’s too long and requires continual reference, but as easy-to-access, sound
advice on professional moral issues, the guidelines are an excellent resource for BBC
staff and other professionals working in the media. While many of them are
advisory, some are mandatory, and all would be taken into consideration should a
journalist breach them in a way that could lead to disciplinary proceedings. Serious
breach of the Editorial Guidelines could be a dismissal matter for a BBC employee.
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Broadcasting 275
The BBC’s future in a white paper

With the BBC’s charter due for renewal in December 2006, there was considerable
debate throughout 2004 and 2005 about its future.
Those who believed strongly in the importance of public service broadcasting and
its importance in providing a plurality of broadcasting and a wider range of infor-
mation, education and entertainment wanted to minimise change to those elements
involving the digital switch-over. However, there were many people who wanted to
reduce considerably the BBC’s programme-making ability, claiming that where pro-
grammes were popular, the market should dominate and that the BBC’s role should
be relegated to specialist programmes aimed at minority groups.
The government published its white paper on the future of the BBC In April
2006. This largely followed the advice gathered from Ofcom, although it played
down Ofcom’s plan for Public Service Publishers. PSPs would have allowed inde-
pendent programme-makers to bid for money to produce public service
broadcasting widening the range of outputs available and spreading the licence-fee
money wider than just the BBC.
The key point made by the white paper was that the BBC governors would be
replaced by a new Trust – separate from the BBC’s management – there to ensure
that the public’s interests were paramount. The view presented throughout the
debate was that the governors were charged with running the BBC and were there-
fore not able to represent fully and independently the views of the public and ensure
those were paramount. There would still be an executive board, which would run
the BBC and would be answerable to the Trust, but the Trust’s role would take it
away from running the BBC.
The government claimed that an important element of this was ensuring that the
BBC’s approach was not dominated by the 10-yearly cycle of charter reviews. The
paper emphasised that the BBC should ‘continue to take fun seriously’ by ensuring
that high-quality entertainment remained a vital part of its mission.
The white paper described all of this as a step change. Talking about the privi-
lege of receiving the licence fee, it identifies a ‘triple lock’ system of licences to ensure
the ‘highest standards of accountability’. The licences would be issued by the Trust
to the executive board for running each of the BBC’s services. These would measure
the ‘essential characteristics’ for all content and apply a ‘public value test’. Ofcom
would be responsible for carrying out the market-impact assessment for the public
value test. The new Trust will take over the Secretary of State’s powers to approve
new services, although the minister retains the power to veto a service if the Trust
does not follow the proper approval procedures. The government identify this as
promoting the independence of the BBC. The white paper also identifies the BBC as
a ‘trusted guide’ for the public during the switch-over period from analog to digital.
Michael Grade was appointed Chairman of the new Trust, but resigned at the
end of 2006 to become Executive Chairman of ITV.
The white paper makes it clear that there will be more opportunities for inde-
pendent companies to bid for programme commissions with the BBC. This has led
to union concerns that this would lead to further cutbacks in the BBC, weakening
its ability to produce quality programmes.
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European Broadcasting Union
The EBU is an association of broadcast organisations, which was formed in 1950

by West European broadcasters to assist with the negotiation of broadcasting rights
for sporting events and programme exchanges. It now operates the Eurovision and
Euroradio networks and has 74 members active in 54 countries in Europe, North
Africa and the Middle East. As well as providing services, the EBU also represents
its members’ interests to the European Parliament from its office in Brussels.
The union’s legal department helps the different services to adopt common pos-
itions to regulatory and legal pressures in their home countries and abroad.
National Union of Journalists
The NUJ was the first body in the UK to introduce a code of journalistic ethics. This
was drawn up at the union’s annual conference in 1936. The union introduced the
code into the rule book, making a breach of the code a disciplinary offence. A jour-
nalist who is a member of the union could be reprimanded, fined or even expelled
from the union for breaching the code.
In 1986, the union set up an Ethics Council. Until 1979, the union had been a
part of the Press Council but, after leaving over what it saw as the Council’s fail-
ings, many members felt that the union should set up its own council. The Ethics
Council was established for two reasons:
• To educate members and help promote better ethical standards.
• To hold hearings on complaints against members who were alleged to have
breached the Code of Conduct. (NUJ 1998: 16)
The second aim was always controversial. Many members argued that it was not
the role of the union to discipline its own members, but others felt there was little
point in having a code of conduct if it was not going to be upheld.
The anti-union stance of the government during the 1980s and 1990s led to a general
weakening of union power and this played a part in reducing the role of the Ethics
Council. No longer did journalists have to have an NUJ card in order to work in the more
prestigious jobs in television and what used to be Fleet Street. This meant that breaching
the NUJ Code, with the consequent risk of discipline and possible expulsion, was no
longer the risk it once might have been. The union, too, was less inclined to deal harshly
with members, as workers became less confident of the benefits of belonging to a union.
The rules were changed in the early 1990s after a number of attempts to remove
the disciplinary role from the Ethics Council altogether. Now the Ethics Council will
hear complaints about members who have allegedly breached the Code of Conduct,
but only if they are made by another member. The Council no longer hears com-
plaints lodged by members of the public. This has reduced complaints to a trickle.
The Council has the power to decide that the Code of Conduct would be best pro-
moted by resolving the complaint by educative rather than disciplinary means. But
if a complaint hearing is held, and the member is found to be at fault, then the Ethics
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National Union of Journalists 277
Council can reprimand that member or pass the case on to the National Executive
Council with a recommendation to impose a stronger punishment, which can
include fines of up to £1,000, suspension of membership or expulsion.
The Council has tended to concentrate on its educational and promotional role
in the past ten years, giving talks to students in colleges and producing guidelines
for journalists on a range of issues, from reporting on mental health issues to child
abuse. It has also had informal talks with the PCC on issues of mutual concern, par-
ticularly the PCC’s Code of Practice.
The union’s 1998 annual conference changed the Code of Conduct, the first time
that had happened for a number of years. The move, in line with the reaction of
other regulatory bodies to the death of the Princess of Wales, was to strengthen the
Code in the area of privacy. The conference also decided to back a call for a clause
dealing specifically with the digital manipulation of pictures. Other changes fol-
lowed in 2001 (privacy) and 2004 (children). The union is now carrying out a major
review of its Code with changes likely at its 2007 conference.
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Chapter 17
TH E EXP E R I E N C E AB R OAD
This chapter looks at some of the regulatory methods used in

other countries:
• The different approach taken in the USA

• A brief examination of some Western European countries
• Some of the systems used to overcome problems of cross-border working
Methods of regulation vary widely throughout the world. The two main types of
regulation revolve around those countries with constitutions and those without. But
these can be sub-divided into those with strong legal protections or methods of sup-
pression and those without. It is not possible to produce three or four groups of
those with laws and those without. There is such a wide variation around the world
that there is a steady gradation of control, starting with countries which allow jour-
nalists a free hand and ending with countries that have almost total state control.
International protection
All EU countries are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.

This is used by the European Court of Human Rights as the basis for the rights of
citizens in Europe. It is now included in British law through the Human Rights Act
1998. There are two main clauses in the Convention that concern us here. One is
about freedom of expression and the other involves invasion of privacy (Exhibit
17.1).
The Council of Europe has also looked at the subject of the media and drafted its
own resolution. This does not have specific power on its own, though, and is merely
an expression of policy (Exhibit 17.2).
The other international code which supports the right to freedom of expression
and contains the individual rights of citizens is the UN Declaration on Human Rights.
This also contains two clauses, one on privacy and one on freedom (Exhibit 17.3).
Although a large number of countries are signatories to the Declaration, it does
not always mean that they adhere to it.
Constitutional protection
America and some European countries have full and effective constitutions which
guarantee, amongst other things, the freedom of the Press or a more general
JOUR_C17.QXP 8/2/07 10:54 Page 279
Exhibit 17.1 The European Convention on Human Rights

8. All persons have the right to respect for his private and family life, for his abode
and his correspondence. . . .
10. (1) Anyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right includes freedom of
opinion and freedom to receive or communicate information or ideas without
interference from public authorities and regardless of borders. This article does
not prevent states from subjecting radio or television broadcasting or cinema
enterprises to a system of authorisations.
(2) The exercise of these freedoms with their accompanying duties and responsi-
bilities may be subjected to certain formalities, conditions, restrictions or
sanctions defined by law, which constitute measures necessary in a democratic
society to national safety, territorial sovereignty or public safety, defence of order
and prevention of crime, protection of health or morals, protection of the repu-
tation of rights of others, in order to prevent the divulging of confidential
information or in order to guarantee the authority and impartiality of judicial
power.
Exhibit 17.2 The Council of Europe Resolution 100 3 (19 9 3)

7. The media’s work is one of ‘mediation’, providing an information service, and the
rights which they own in connection with freedom of information depend on its
addressees, that is the citizens.
8. Information is a fundamental right which has been highlighted by the case law of
the European Commission and Court of Human Rights relating to Article 10 of
the European Convention on Human Rights and recognised under Article 9 of the
European Convention an Transfrontier Television, as well as in all democratic
constitutions. The owner of the right is the citizen, who also has the related right
to demand that the information supplied by journalists is conveyed truthfully, in
the case of news, and honestly, in the case of opinions, without outside interfer-
ence by either the public authorities or the private sector.
9. The public authorities must not consider that they own information. The repre-
sentativeness of such authorities provides the legal basis for efforts to guarantee
and extend pluralism in the media and to ensure that the necessary conditions are
created for exercising freedom of expression and the right to information and pre-
cluding censorship. . . .
15. Neither publishers nor proprietors nor journalists should consider that they own
the news. News organisations must treat information not as a commodity but as a
fundamental right of the citizen.
freedom of expression. By and large these countries are more likely to accept the
protection of some citizens’ rights, in areas such as privacy, in the knowledge that
Press freedom is secured by the constitution.
The US constitution is one of the most obvious examples. The First Amendment
to the constitution is precise and thoughtful: ‘Congress shall make no law . . .
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280 1 7 • The experience abroad
Exhibit 17.3 The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights

12. No-one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home
or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has
the right to the protection of the law against interference or attacks. . . .
19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes
freedom to hold opinion without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’ This gives journalists in the USA
considerable support, more than enough for them to feel confident about allowing
protections for ordinary citizens. The privacy laws in the USA allow far less invasion
than in Britain. There are four different types of complaint that can be made about
invasions of privacy in the USA:
• Intrusion, phone tapping or trespassing without consent.
• False light – resembles libel in that it attempts to prevent the circulation of
untrue stories.
• Misappropriation – a person’s name or likeness is used without consent.
• Embarrassment – an objection to the publication of private information. (Dill
1986: 135)
Public interest is a defence against a charge of invading privacy. Indeed, the
burden is on the person claiming privacy to prove that there is no public interest in
the story. This is rarely easy to do and consequently there are few successful embar-
rassment cases. Nevertheless, an attempt at protection does exist (ibid.: 136).
In a case cited by Barbara Dill (ibid.: 132), the first woman ever to be elected
president of a student body was later found to be a transsexual. The woman had
gone to great lengths to keep this secret and when it was publicised by the Oakland
Tribune she was devastated and brought a suit against the paper. She won and was
awarded $775,000 (including $525,000 punitive damages and $25,000 against the
writer of the article personally). However, this was later overturned on appeal, on
a technicality, and when a new trial was ordered, the college’s insurance company
ordered the paper to make an offer, which was accepted. There can be no doubt that
if this story were translated to Britain, the Star or The Sun, uncovering a confidence
of this sort, would have no hesitation about publishing it – and not in a small
gossip-style column but as a major lead story.
In another case cited by Dill, a woman was taken to hospital for a pancreas
problem that had led to her to eating enough for ten people but still losing 25 lb in
a year. Her picture was taken without her consent in hospital. The subsequent story
and picture were used by a paper. The court ruled that although the story may have
been newsworthy, her name was not. The case was not helped by the strong-arm
tactics used by the news agency that gathered the story. If this case had happened in
the UK, although the PCC’s Code would have been breached, in that the picture
should not have been taken in the hospital without permission, the story (and name)
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would certainly have been used with a picture if it could have been obtained in some
other way.
If the law on privacy were the same in the UK as it is in the USA, it could present
a major problem for the UK press. One only has to consider the number of times in
recent years that photographs have been published of major celebrities showing
more than they had intended while manoeuvring in and out of cars in short skirts.
The laws on trespass and intrusion are also very limiting. Taping interviews without
permission, trespassing or using trickery are all potentially illegal. Trespass is not
often a problem as it is difficult to bring a case, provided the journalist leaves when
asked by a person with suitable authority.
America was one of the first countries in the world to have a code of conduct.
Nelson Antrim Crawford, in The Ethics of Journalism, identifies the first as being
the Kansas Editorial Association’s Code of Ethics for the Publisher, written in 1910
(Crawford, 1969). This sets out codes of practice for advertising departments, cir-
culation and news. Many of the early codes varied from being mission statements
for the paper to being disciplinary codes. They covered everything from drinking on
duty, to dealing with customers, to truth, and objectivity. A large number of early
US codes are published in Crawford’s The Ethics of Journalism and they are well
worth reading, if only to enjoy their diversity. Many newspapers in the USA still
have codes, although most of them are more like mission statements.
The Society of Professional Journalists in the USA, which has a membership of
about 13,500, has a code of conduct which it borrowed from the American Society
of Newspaper Editors in 1926. It wrote its own code in 1973 (the SPJ was still known
as Sigma Delta Chi in those days) and revised it in 1984 and 1987. Its present version
was adopted in September 1996 after a lengthy debate amongst its membership, part
of which was conducted on the internet. The code is substantially different from UK
codes in its presentation but is not all that different in content. The code does under-
line some of the differences I have mentioned before: presumption of innocence in
criminal law is covered in this code, for instance. The code also recognises that the
people the media come into contact with have rights. ‘Minimise harm’ is one of the
duties expressed in the code. The code says: ‘Journalists should recognise that private
people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public
officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public
need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.’ The code also calls on journalists to
‘Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity’ (http://spj.org/ethics/code.htm).
In many ways the code is much more high-minded than those on offer in the UK,
yet in other ways it is more practical: ‘Journalists should always question sources’
motives before promising anonymity’ (http://spj.org/ethics/code.htm), it says, like an
old and wise news editor warning an enthusiastic trainee journalist. It’s good advice,
but is it ethics? There is more excellent advice about accepting gifts or bribes, but
there is little in the code that a UK journalist would disagree with in principle. This
is not the only code in existence. In the Associated Press (AP) Managing Editors’
Code we find another theme that crops up in US codes time and time again. They
are much more concerned about lobbying government to ensure they maintain free
access to information than in the UK. It is ironic that it was Margaret Thatcher who
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pushed a private member’s bill to give the media access to public meetings, yet as
Prime Minister she privatised all of these institutions, thus ensuring their meetings
were once again held in secret.
The Managing Editors say in their code: ‘The newspaper should fight vigorously
for public access to news of government through open meetings and records’
(http://www.apme.com/html/ethics.html). This, of course, is in a country which has a
Freedom of Information Act, allowing journalists free access to all public documents.
The Radio–Television News Directors’ Association also has a code of conduct
(http://web.missouri.edu/~jourvs/rtcodes.html). Again it includes the right to a fair
trial but, interestingly, this code talks about the need to be impartial. None of the
print codes felt this was necessary. With no laws limiting broadcasters’ right to say
what they like (because of the First Amendment), it was felt necessary to put this in a
code of ethics. In the UK of course, the law has already included this. But why did
broadcasters in the USA feel obliged to make it an ethical issue when the print jour-
nalists did not, especially in a country where television is seen as having many of the
qualities of the tabloids in the UK? American journalists seem, from the outside at
least, to take ethics more seriously than their UK counterparts. There are a number of
books, codes have been around since the 1920s and the subject is taught seriously in
journalism schools. Yet their laws are a lot more straightforward. The freedom of the
press is protected by the constitution and freedom of information is guaranteed. There
are few restrictive laws, with the exception of privacy and defamation. There is no
Press Council, however, or other body to police the codes of conduct on a federal
basis. News councils do exist though. The Minnesota News Council, for instance, has
been in existence since 1971. It attempts to promote media fairness by encouraging
the public to ‘insist upon responsible reporting and editing’. It holds public hearings
on ethical complaints and has the support of the local media. The complaints hearing
has local media representatives sitting on it with a sitting justice of the state supreme
court as chairperson. According to its internet website, the News Council offers the
following services:
• Public hearings on complaints brought by individuals or organisations named in a story who
feel damaged by it (selected third-party complaints are also accepted if they are of compelling
public interest and raise a significant ethical question).
• Public forums on topics of media ethics.
• Private forums to facilitate communication between the media and organisations and
communities experiencing trouble in working with the media.
• Mediation assistance between the public and media.
• Public speaking to civic and educational groups.
• It publishes a quarterly newsletter, NEWSWORTHY.
• It transmits a cable television programme, NEWSWORTHY, premièred in August 1996 and
broadcast on the Twin Cities regional cable channel. (http://www.news-
council.org/trial/newsworthy_tv.html)
Other news councils have come and gone, so these voluntary, self-styled organ-
isations depend entirely on the enthusiasm of the small group determined to run
them and the support, or lack of it, of the local media.
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Countries with no constitutional protection of freedom

Let us now move on to countries which, although they do not have constitutional
freedom of expression, seem in many respects to be very similar to America. Sweden
was the first European country to become involved in regulating journalism ethics.
It set up its first press council in 1874. Sweden’s code of conduct is not enormously
different from that of the PCC. It is much more straightforward, though, spelling
out the issues with little of the fine rhetoric of the US codes. The approach of the
Swedish journalist is very different from that of the UK journalist. With few laws to
consider, the Swedes take their code of ethics very seriously. It is difficult to tell why
this might be. Perhaps they are more responsive to social pressures? Perhaps they
are less concerned with gossip? Perhaps there is less competition? Certainly the press
compensation funds which allow for state support of newspapers may remove some
of the market pressure faced by UK journalists.
Sweden has a media council supported by all sectors of the industry. It deals with
complaints from the public and measures them against a code of conduct. It is
slightly unusual in that it has a media council and not just a press council. It also
has an ombudsman who can take up complaints on behalf of a reader or viewer.
Dutch journalists also seem to take ethics very seriously. They too have very few
laws limiting the media, and think hard about their ethics. Interestingly, although
Sweden has a strong code of ethics, which journalists support strongly, journalists
in the Netherlands have opposed having such a code. There is a general acceptance
of the ‘Bordeaux’ Code of the International Federation of Journalists (see Appendix
5). Their collective view, according to Huub Evers, an author and lecturer in jour-
nalistic ethics at one of the journalism schools in the Netherlands, is that codes are
too restrictive. A detailed code, covering all the issues a journalist needs to know, is
too inflexible to work in everyday practice (see Chapter 15 on working with codes).
The editors-in-chief of a number of Dutch papers did try to formulate a code in the
mid-1990s, but this was rejected by most journalism groups within the Netherlands
and the Press Council continues to discuss complaints case by case and make a dec-
laration of principle. According to Dr Evers, the Council’s reputation is growing.
Adjudications of the Dutch Press Council are printed in the union’s journal, The
Journalist.
Legal controls
Some countries, of course, go further and require legal controls of some areas of
media work. Italy takes a different approach to regulation from most other
European countries. It has a code of conduct and, like America, there is strong con-
stitutional protection for the rights of the citizen and personal honour, including the
right of ownership of a person’s own image. This means that in certain circum-
stances a person needs to give permission before his or her photograph may be used
in the media. There is also a limited amount of freedom of information. This is
mainly at a local level. In addition, the law enforces the journalist’s right to protect
sources. The journalist is obliged ‘to respect professional secrecy with regard to
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sources of information, when this is required by its confidential nature’ (Ordine dei
Giornalisti 1993: 7).
There is strong legal protection for the code of conduct through professional reg-
istration. A journalist may only work in Italy if he or she is a member of the Ordine
dei Giornalisti and is listed on the Professional Register. This professional body
ensures that only properly trained people, who have passed their professional
exams, taken before a committee of five journalists and two magistrates appointed
by the court of appeal in Rome, may be listed on the register and hold a press card.
No one under the age of twenty-one can become a journalist. Breaching the code of
ethics may mean a member being expelled and their livelihood removed: ‘A member
can be removed from the professional register if his [sic] conduct has seriously com-
promised professional decorum in such a way that his continuation in the
professional register or lists is incompatible with the dignity of the profession’
(Ordine dei Giornalisti 1993: 14). Journalists may only re-apply for membership
after five years. A warning, reprimand or suspension is a more usual punishment.
Professional registration for journalists is an uncommon approach around the
world because of the damaging effect that having only professional journalists
writing for publication can have on press freedom. Such limiting of access to the
media must also limit its ability to provide a range of ideas and opinions.
‘Journalism is not a profession. It is the exercise by occupation of the right of free
expression available to every citizen. That right, being freely available to all, cannot
in principle be withdrawn from a few by any system of licensing or professional reg-
istration’ (Robertson 1983: 3). This concern has not escaped the Italians and a
referendum was held in June 1997 to decide whether professional registration
should stay. The Radical Party in Italy opposes registration because it says it limits
press freedom. A number of journalists, many of them influential in the Italian
unions, oppose change. They say that more pressure could be put on journalists by
proprietors and editors to write biased copy. It would be easier to buy in political
viewpoints. A limit on entry into the profession gives Italian journalists more
freedom to write what they want than journalists in the rest of Europe. ‘Journalists
have the unsuppressible right of freedom of information and criticism, limited by
compliance with legislation designed to safeguard the privacy of others, the irrevo-
cable obligation to respect the substantial truth of the facts, and respect for the
obligations imposed by honesty and good faith’ (Ordine dei Giornalisti 1993: 7).
There are other countries which pick up specific laws to control areas of journal-
istic work. All of these areas tend to appear in codes of conduct, but individual
countries consider them important enough to be singled out. They cover the fol-
lowing subjects:
• Privacy
• Presumption of innocence
• Children
• Protection of personal honour
• Media silence
• Reality TV
JOUR_C17.QXP 8/2/07 10:54 Page 285
Privacy
Privacy is one of the areas of difference in journalistic practice around the world.
Italy and France, for instance, both have privacy legislation whilst Britain, Sweden
and the Netherlands do not. Generally this is protection from invasion of privacy
but some countries also protect from publication. Germany is one country that is
leading the way on privacy legislation and several of the recent decisions on privacy
in Germany will have a direct effect on the interpretation of privacy law elsewhere
in Europe, including the UK. The Princess Caroline of Monaco case in 2004, for
instance, starts to put limits on privacy in what might be described as public places
(see Chapter 6 for fuller details).
Laws preventing phone-tapping, bugging and other forms of invasion of privacy
are common throughout Europe. Less common are laws allowing complainants to
take action about a published invasion of their privacy. France enforces the right to
a private life through article 9 of its civil code: ‘Each has a right to respect for his
private life’ (http://www.uta.fi/ethicnet/).
Presumption of innocence
One of the areas of ethics which varies widely across Europe is coverage of court
cases and in particular the rights of defendants to protect their reputations. A
Swedish journalist, for instance, would be very cautious about naming a person
accused of a crime, and facing trial. While this can be partly ascribed to the different
legal system, which means that the case can be heard in full before a lower and a
higher court, leading to possible prejudice of the case at the higher court, the main
thrust of ethical argument in Sweden seems to be the protection of civil rights. Only
after the trial and a finding of guilt might a Swedish journalist consider using the
convict’s name. In Britain, of course, the name is used without a second thought. It
is assumed to be the right thing to do. Naming the person is not seen as an invasion
of privacy, a secondary punishment, but an assurance that justice is done. In April
1996, the then Lord Chief Justice, the Rt Hon Lord Taylor of Gosforth, spoke to a
Commonwealth Judges and Magistrates’ Association Symposium which was consid-
ering allowing TV cameras into courts. He said: ‘It is crucial in a democracy that
justice is administered in public: “Justice must not only be done, but must be seen
to be done.” ’ Although he opposed the idea of cameras in courts as putting too
much pressure on witnesses and defendants, he said: ‘It is healthy that the media,
and through them the ordinary citizen, should observe closely and critically how
public institutions and services are run.’
The Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, agreed, although with reserva-
tions. In a letter to all judges in 1997, he expressed his concern at the standard of
some press reporting of judicial decisions, whilst restating his belief that the criminal
justice system is, and should be, the subject of public scrutiny. Recommending that
before passing sentence in cases which might attract media attention, judges should
produce a written note of their sentencing remarks for distribution, he said: ‘It is
unfair to the individual judge concerned, as well as to the public’s perception of the
JOUR_C17.QXP 8/2/07 10:54 Page 286
judiciary as a whole, if criticism by the media is based not on the facts as laid before
the judge but on a markedly different account of the situation.’ The Press
Complaints Commission described the Lord Chancellor’s initiative as a ‘useful rec-
ommendation’.
The Netherlands follows the same route as Sweden’s. Court cases are covered,
but reporters talk about a ‘28-year-old man from Amsterdam’ or maybe ‘28-year-
old A.B. from Amsterdam’. The Dutch also believe that defendants’ chances of
rehabilitation should not be harmed by identifying them.
Yet things are changing. In line with the move away from 1960s’ liberalism into
the more authoritarian approach of the 1990s, both the Swedes and the Dutch are
reconsidering their views. Already, some cases in both countries have led to people
being named and there are moves to allow TV cameras into courts in the
Netherlands. Cameras are not actually banned at the moment, but it requires the
judge’s approval in each case and this is rarely granted. The new law, if passed,
would allow cameras in unless the judge refused. Since that would presumably
require the judge to have a specific reason for refusal, this is a complete change-
about for the Netherlands. It seems that as society becomes more concerned with
punishing the guilty than rehabilitating them, the journalistic ethic will change. This
change is slow, but will almost certainly happen. Already, reporters from those
countries, which a few years ago would not have considered naming suspects or
convicts and would have been horrified at the suggestion that they should, are pre-
pared to consider the principle case by case. If TV cameras are introduced into the
Dutch courts on a regular basis, then it is extremely unlikely that anonymity will
continue for long, although editors generally would prefer to continue that tra-
dition.
Children
Children are protected in two main ways: by taste and decency and by confiden-
tiality. Germany, for instance, has strong laws to protect the young from corruption.
The ‘Gesetz über die Verbreitung Jugendfahrender Schriften 1961’ (Law on the dis-
semination of publications endangering the young) established an examining board
of twelve members who may list a publication which is considered to be of a violent,
pornographic or racist nature. Although daily newspapers and political periodicals
are not covered, if a publication appears on the list twice in the same year, it may
be removed from circulation for up to a year.
Protection of personal honour

Several European countries offer protection of personal honour under their consti-
tutions and this spills through into their codes of ethics. The International
Federation of Journalists’ Code of Conduct, for instance, says: ‘The journalist shall
regard as grave professional offences the following: plagiarism, malicious misrepre-
sentation, calumny, slander, libel, unfounded accusations’ (International Federation
of Journalists’ Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists,
JOUR_C17.QXP 8/2/07 10:54 Page 287
http://www.uta.fi/ethicnet/). This is picked up in quite a few European codes as a

quick look through http://www.uta.fi/Ethicnet/ will confirm. In the UK there are no
codes of ethics which pick up this point and the issue tends to be left entirely in the
domain of defamation. If someone’s personal honour is called into question, their
only recourse is to sue.
Media silence
Another debate that has cropped up in Europe concerns voluntary ‘media silences’.
A spate of incidents in the Netherlands sparked off this debate. Nine divorced
fathers, in completely separate incidents over a space of a year, killed their children
and then in most cases killed themselves. Academic research in the Netherlands by
a child psychologist suggested that the media coverage was sparking other such inci-
dents. In other words, reading about the events of an earlier case was likely to
provoke another. The US psychologist David Philips has done similar work which
also claims to prove this link. As a result, there were calls for a media silence on
these cases. Editors ignored these calls but did alter the way they used the stories,
putting them inside the paper rather than on the front page and not using photo-
graphs. Apart from not being entirely convinced by the argument, the editors also
thought that it was their duty to inform people. The cases would still have been
heard of locally, and indeed several of the cases happened only streets from each
other, suggesting that any copycat effect did not require the newspapers.
Reality TV
This is another ethical dilemma that is yet to hit Britain in a big way. Although we
do have some programmes which contain footage from surveillance cameras or
police car cameras, and there are a few programmes, such as the Roger Cook show,
which have unplanned interviews which can involve invasion of offices or homes,
there are not many such programmes. But in other parts of Europe, such as the
Netherlands, reality TV is becoming a problem. In the Netherlands, freelance
camera teams roam around filming road accidents and similar incidents as they
happen. As only the more exciting footage is screened on TV, there are suggestions
that such footage is sometimes elaborated. It is also important that victims are
recognisable. This involves some close-ups of road accident victims which viewers
found too excessive. Some protests followed.
Countries with considerable media controls

There are, of course, some countries which are very heavily controlled by law or the
government. Whilst there are certainly some authorities which merely use military
power to suppress journalism, some use the law to restrict the media and to allow
censorship. One of the most difficult countries in the world in which to work at the
moment is Algeria. Of the forty-nine journalists killed throughout the world in
1995, twenty-two were working in Algeria. In total, fifty-seven journalists were
JOUR_C17.QXP 8/2/07 10:54 Page 288
murdered in the three years leading up to 1996. Fifty-five publications were sus-
pended and twenty-three journalists were detained for longer than forty-eight hours,
while a total of thirty-nine were arrested (Reporters Sans Frontières, http:www.
calvancom.fr/rsf/).
One such incident, according to Reporters Sans Frontières, was the arrest of
Chawki Amari, a cartoonist and columnist with the privately-owned Algerian daily,
La Tribune. He was accused of producing a cartoon poking fun at the Algerian
ruling classes. The courts used article 160 of the Penal Code, which condemns
‘anyone who deliberately and publicly tears up, defaces or defiles the national
symbol’, to prosecute him. Chawki Amari was given a three-year suspended prison
sentence in July 1996. On 3 September 1996, La Tribune, a French-language news-
paper, was suspended for six months by an Algiers court, on the orders of the
Interior Ministry, on the basis that it should have an Arabic edition. It was the first
time such an argument had been used, says Reporters Sans Frontières, pointing out
that hardly any French papers have Arabic editions.
Iran has similar problems. A law there prohibits ownership of satellite dishes,
making it impossible to receive foreign national stations. Iraqi nationals are not
allowed to own dish aerials either. The two internal TV stations and two radio
stations are state-owned and the journalists are classed as civil servants and are
answerable to the Information Ministry.
Egypt is another country with a poor record on press freedom. The law ensures
that only the government and the political parties can own newspapers. Reporters
Sans Frontières explains:
Launching an independent newspaper – in other words one that is not controlled by the
government or affiliated to a political party – is theoretically possible. But the legal conditions that
would have to be fulfilled are such that it would be almost impossible in practice. The first obstacle
is that the newspaper would have to obtain a publication licence from the Higher Press Council. In
addition, the law imposes financial conditions that are difficult to fulfil. Anyone wanting to start a
daily, for instance, has to have 250,000 Egyptian pounds (70,000 dollars) in capital available, and
shareholdings are not allowed to exceed 500 pounds (140 dollars). These conditions effectively
prevent the emergence of an independent press in Egypt. At the moment no truly independent
newspaper exists. (http://www.rsf.fr)
Radio and television are also state monopolies, making dissent extremely diffi-
cult. In May 1995, the government passed a law which toughened the penalties for
authors of articles deemed ‘libellous’ or ‘liable to damage state institutions or the
national economy’. The country’s journalists opposed this vigorously, claiming that
the law was overly vague. Since its introduction, no fewer than ninety-three journal-
ists have been charged and six have been given prison sentences.
Journalists in Egypt campaigned vigorously for the law to be repealed. They won
some concessions, but the day after the vote on the law, President Mubarak spoke
out in support of the new law, stressing that no journalist would be imprisoned
because of his opinions, only because of accusations against third parties. ‘I am 100
per cent in favour of press freedom, but not freedom to libel’, the president said. ‘No
writer will be prevented from making criticism, even if it is harsh, as long as he
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Death and torture 289
avoids defamation’ (http://www.rsf.fr (accessed May 1999)). The president claimed

that the new law was needed as the journalists’ own code of conduct was not
applied strongly enough. Once again the link between press freedom, ethics and the
law is thrown into stark relief.
Death and torture
Imprisonment, torture and death is the fate of journalists in some countries. While
this isn’t always at the hands of government agencies, there are plenty of countries
where those seeking power find it useful to suppress free speech. According to the
International Federation of Journalists, more than 1,100 journalists and media staff
have been killed in the line of duty over twelve years up to and including 2005.
Reporters Sans Frontières, another organisation campaigning for journalists’ safety,
records a similar number. Not all of these deaths are killings; some were journalists
involved in road accidents or caught in crossfire, but many were murders.
The number of deaths varies year on year from about 60 to 129 in 2004.
According to the IFJ, 807 journalists were imprisoned in 2005, 63 were killed and
1,308 were attacked or threatened. Murder is fairly rare in the British Isles but
Martin O’Hagan was shot and killed by terrorists in Northern Ireland in 2001
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,560952,00.html (accessed
19/7/06)). Surprisingly, he was the first journalist to be killed in the province since
1969, although not the first to be threatened. It was criminals who were behind the
murder of Irish journalist Veronica Guerin in June 1996. She had become famous
for stories about Ireland’s drug barons and eventually she paid the price.
Death and torture are much more likely repercussions in some countries than
others. Not surprisingly, Iraq headed the list of places where journalists died in
2005, with 24 deaths recorded by Reporters Sans Frontières (www.rsf.org). Other
places with poor records, though, include the Philippines with seven dead;
Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti,
Lebanon, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, Sri Lanka and Somalia all with two and Sierra
Leone, Ecuador, Belarus Colombia and Libya. Their leaders or groups within the
countries, including state police forces are identified as press freedom ‘predators’ by
RSF. (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=13580 (accessed 19/7/06)).
Suspension of publication is another tool used regularly by governments as a way
of crushing freedom of the media and dissent. Countries that do not share politics
or ideology often share such methods. Examples include Iran, identified as the
Middle East’s biggest prison for journalists by RSF. More than a dozen publications
were suspended in 2005. Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko controls all the
state-owned press and broadcasting media outlets. Killings of journalists are never
properly investigated. Zimbabwe uses its Press Court and repressive press licences
to ensure dissent to Robert Mugabe’s rule is silenced. More details can be found on
the RSF website at www.rsf.org.
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Global code of ethics
A global code of ethics was suggested at a World Association of Press Councils

meeting in Istanbul in 1998 and the European Commission has suggested a pan-
European code. This has not received any support within the industry in the UK and
the PCC is strongly opposed. Speaking at a meeting of the Commonwealth Press
Union in 1998, Lord Wakeham, the then PCC chairman, said a code could ‘end up
doing much mischief and be misused by those who seek to bring in often draconian
controls against the press through the back door, under the guise of a respectable
international body’ (PCC, 1998: 3). He pointed out that it would be impossible to
produce a global code of conduct that would be acceptable to all societies without
curtailing the freedom to report in many of them.
Cross-border collaborations
The European Broadcasting Union is one such body, and is the largest professional
association of national broadcasters in the world with 74 members in 54 countries.
It was founded in Western Europe in 1950 and negotiates broadcasting rights for
major sporting events, operates the Eurovision and Euroradio networks, organises
programme exchanges and coordinates co-productions.
TV Without Frontiers is a European directive aimed at determining jurisdiction
for European broadcasters to ensure that it is clear which set of laws apply to which
broadcaster when national borders are crossed. For instance BBC 1 can be received
in Ireland, Holland, and some other European countries and so jurisdiction can be
significant, so the TVWF-Directive guarantees freedom of reception and no restric-
tion of retransmission.
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Chapter 18
TH E F UTU R E
This chapter examines some of the issues that might change the
way we view some ethical or regulatory problems in the future. It
discusses the issues involved in:
• Citizen journalism and the increase of audience input

• The rise in interactivity produced by the internet
• The impact that convergence of media will have for journalists
A number of issues will concern the media in the future. It is probable that none of
these will change the basic moral problems that face journalists in their daily work,
but it is possible that they will make decision-making more difficult. Working across
international borders, for instance, emphasises the differences in moral approach
between cultures and the use of the internet will add other problems. Interactivity is
an important new element of the internet. The consumer changes from the passive
reader or viewer of what is offered to someone who can actively track down the
information he or she requires and respond instantaneously by e-mail and even
become a news-gatherer in their own right. Citizen journalism, through weblogs and
personal websites and what the NUJ describes as witness contributors will become
more and more a feature of future news-gathering operations. The consumer can
supply his or her own slant on the news directly to the supplier faster and more
efficiently than ever before. Journalists at BBC online are often alerted to stories by
readers e-mailing for information on a breaking story. This unique interactive
element is what many commentators see as the most important facet of the internet.
It should allow more input from a vast range of sources, most of which are more
likely to be pushing their own viewpoint. With this wider range of available
material, the filtering process, if only in terms of time available to read all this infor-
mation, will become more difficult.
Citizen journalism is also growing with many people producing weblogs that put
their view of the news with their own commentary. These are often accessed by pro-
fessionals and are used as starting points for stories. They are even lifted wholesale
by some sources: an unethical process as well as being one that breaches copyright
laws in most of the Western world.
Citizen journalism has grown at such a pace through the first few years of the
new millennium that journalists have been facing a major change on the way
breaking stories are gathered. Many people throughout the world have mobile
phones, many of which are capable of taking reasonable quality video or still pic-
tures. These can then be sent direct to the news desks of major newspapers or
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292 1 8 • The future
broadcasters. This is described by the NUJ as witness contributors, to distinguish

those who have stumbled on a newsworthy event and would like to see their pic-
tures used in the newspapers and possibly earn a fee, from those would-be
journalists who write blogs and columns on the net. Already several agencies have
sprung up to help witness contributors find a wider market. Scoopt is one of the
better known, and it promises to sell the work of amateurs and share the fees. Their
website states:
Who will take tomorrow’s front page photograph – a professional press photographer or a passer-
by armed with a cameraphone? Somebody, somewhere is in the position to photograph just about
anything that happens on the planet. If you capture a newsworthy event, you could have a valuable
scoop on your hands. Scoopt can sell your photos and videos to the media – and you’ll get paid just
like a professional. Scoopt is simple. Scoopt is free. Join Scoopt today and snap . . . send . . . sell!
(http://www.scoopt.com)
This is a phenomenon that can only grow. As cameraphones become more and
more sophisticated, so the quality of video and still pictures will improve and with
virtually everyone on the planet owning such a camera, their ability to send pictures
of the latest news direct to newsrooms will grow. Most newsrooms accept such pic-
tures and some national newspapers and broadcasters actively encourage the
sending of such pictures. There are concerns about the ethics of such pictures and
about the health and safety of contributors. One amateur, whose video of a major
fuel depot blaze in the south of England was later played by several of the major
news broadcasters, could be heard on the playback commenting on how dangerous
this was and hoping that nothing else exploded. In other incidents, pictures of road
accidents or suicides were sent to newsdesks without any warning being given to
those receiving the pictures of their horrific nature. There is also the risk that celebri-
ties, often the subject of such snatch pictures, will now have no real privacy at all.
Any trip into the open world will put them at risk of being photographed. Scoopt
carries a gallery of celebrity pictures, and magazines such as Heat are always keen
to get interesting pictures of celebrities. If there is not a free-for-all, it is likely that
it will only have been prevented by the courts or Parliament agreeing to limit such
pictures by allowing a general growth of a tort of privacy. Already some lawyers in
the USA boast that they are able to prevent such pictures of high-profile clients
there.
This phenomenon is only different to what has happened since the media began,
in terms of its scale. Cheap and sophisticated hardware means everyone has access to
the equipment needed to take pictures and send them quickly to news desks. Twenty
years ago, only a few people had the cameras and facilities to get film or prints to a
news desk in time for it to be of significant value. The change in technology was
firmly highlighted by the terrorism bombs in London on 7 July 2005. Pictures were
sent through to news desks that would not have been possible for professional pho-
tographers to obtain. Quick-thinking passengers evacuating the bombed
underground trains were able to take videos of their escape and send them to news
desks. Professional news people were not able to get anywhere near the scene and so
virtually all the good pictures were taken by amateurs. It was a watershed moment.
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The future 293
It has caused a lot of concern amongst journalists, many of whom see it as a

threat to their livelihoods. However, it follows in a long tradition. War correspon-
dents, for instance, were often army officers, sending dispatches back from a front
that was almost impossible for a professional journalist to reach or too expensive
for a newspaper to send a correspondent to. Journalists are still going to be required
to produce the routine reports or to provide updates and background material once
the initial story has been broken. There is little chance that bloggers or witness con-
tributors are likely to be interested in extending their journalism into the everyday
work of the professional. These changes are also likely to fit into the developmets
that many in the industry will require in order for it to remain profitable. The
general view amongst business leaders is that things will become more difficult for
the media over the next few years. Greater demands on shrinking advertising
budgets will lead to tighter margins. This means that journalist processors will be
controlling material from amateurs who do not have a firm grasp of ethics. Pictures
and copy will have to be checked more carefully to ensure they were gathered in
accordance with the appropriate code of practice.
Many people see the present grip on the media by a small number of moguls as
being broken by the internet and growing interactivity. I am sceptical enough to
believe that where big money and control are involved, the reverse is more likely to
be true. We may well fall into the hands of an even smaller, more powerful group
of moguls. Already there is evidence that consumers find the sheer quantity of infor-
mation that is available overwhelming, and turn to portal sites for assistance. Portal
sites are internet sites whose sole purpose is to direct the consumer to sites of specific
interest. If you are interested in media ethics (and you may not be by now), then
there are several portal sites which would guide you on to other sites about media
ethics. Many portal sites are now growing up. They usually have their own material
and then direct the consumer on to specialist sites for in-depth information.
Many of these have been developed by existing mainstream news providers. The
BBC, Electronic Telegraph, and the Guardian online are such sites. Some have devel-
oped out of the new technology industries, but aim to do the same thing: Yahoo and
MSN are two such portals. They provide information content of their own, filtered
and tailored in a traditional way, and provide access to an indexed range of
additional sites.
These sites will grow in importance. Despite the claims that the ‘me paper’ (an
online ‘newspaper’ filtered from original sources only by criteria decided by the
reader) will take over on the intenet, the reverse seems likely to be the case. Most
people access online news from sources they trust – usually the brands that they
have grown up trusting. This is why the BBC online, Guardian unlimited, The Daily
Telegraph online and the Washington Post online are the sort of sites that are doing
well and are likely to continue to hold their readers’ loyalty. Newer sites are being
used, but even then they tend to be either new but corporate brands, such as AOL
or Yahoo, or highly specialist sites selected for their expertise.
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Cross-border working
As the journalist becomes more international, so working across borders will seem
less and less unusual. At the moment the journalist’s forays abroad tend to be for
spells as a foreign correspondent or to cover a war or election in a particular spot
for a short period before returning home. Technology is making it much easier for
the journalist to research in a foreign country from their desk, as well as making it
more likely for them to be working for a multinational employer on a multinational
publication. Moving news on to the World Wide Web ensures that journalists will
be working for a multinational audience.
Although it is unlikely that this will bring new moral problems, it does make the
regulatory system more difficult. Something illegal in one country may be legal in
another but highly unethical in a third. Covering courts, for instance, is an
important part of the media’s business in Britain. Naming the accused, their alleged
crime and defence is seen as an important part of ensuring that justice is seen to be
done. While some people might argue that some of the more unsavoury details of
court cases should not appear in the media (much of the detail of the Rosemary
West trial was voluntarily suppressed by many papers as being unsuitable for a
family newspaper), hardly anyone in this country opposes the view that the media
should publish details of major trials to ensure that public justice is done. Yet in
Sweden, journalists are horrified at the idea of naming the accused during trials.
Even in important trials, the normal practice is not to name the accused until after
a finding of guilt, and often not even then. Journalists will need to be even more
aware of the systems in other countries if they are working globally.
The internet
The internet throws up a number of ethical problems that have yet to be seriously
addressed by journalists. Concerns over copyright have already led some commer-
cial operators to start withdrawing their intellectual property from the internet.
Pictures of film stars or of scenes from cult favourites, which had been spread liber-
ally on the Net for the enjoyment of fans, are now being withdrawn as they start to
appear in publications both on and off the Net. The X Files TV show, for instance,
had built up a large internet-based following, possibly because its fans were young,
moneyed and technologically literate. So damaging did the copyright infringements
become, with pictures and scripts being passed around the Net, that Fox Television
issued a cease-and-desist order in the USA against an unofficial site which Fox
claimed had been using copyright material. In a 2006 employment tribunal case, a
photographer claimed he was made redundant from the Jewish News because he
refused to be involved in the illegal downloading of pictures from the internet for
use in the paper (Lagan 2006: 8).
Much material is being placed on the Net by organisations in the hope of
attracting journalists. The UK government, for instance, now puts out all its press
releases this way and charges freelance journalists for sending out hard copy of press
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The internet 295
releases. Many commercial organisations, such as film and video distributors and
fashion houses, also distribute press information this way. Details on major film
releases, along with pictures and star interviews, might be just the ticket for a local
paper hoping to flesh out its review pages. While this sort of PR work is only a tech-
nological update of the old press handout, there is a greater temptation to use the
already keyed-in copy rather than write a new piece from scratch using the handout
as notes.
Internet material is much easier to access than traditional methods, but it is also
much more difficult to be certain that one is getting the most up-to-date infor-
mation. The use of the internet as a research tool is becoming more important in
many newsrooms, although journalists, in the UK at least, lag well behind other
researchers in this area. The burden of proof for any source is more difficult on the
internet as the element of trust and credibility is not there. Even if a site carries the
name of a large company, there is no guarantee it is an authorised site. Many sites
are now being set up to attack the credibility of a company. A disgruntled ex-
employee or former customer can easily set up a site with a credible name to give
damaging hoax information about the company. All internet information needs to
be treated with caution unless one is confident about the site.
Journalists also need to remember that internet information only gives one side
of the story. Information on the Net is only there because copyright owners want to
put it there. Whether it is information they have painstakingly gathered to expose
government corruption, or a multi-colour presentation on the latest model of a car
put out by its manufacturer, it must all be treated with the same scepticism that
should be used about any source.
Sad ‘anoraks’ no longer scribble their pet obsessions in green ink on jagged-torn
pages of lined exercise books. Their reports are now as superbly presented on the
Net as any corporate presentation. This slickness appears to add veracity where
none exists. Much material on the Net comes from unofficial or commercial sources
and needs to be treated with suspicion.
The issue of credibility of information and trust on the internet is an important
one for the public-relations industry. Practitioners want to be able to find a way to
assure journalists and customers that the information is accurate. The question of
credibility is also important for journalists. Many traditional newspaper and broad-
cast organisations now have very sophisticated websites. The importance of the
validation of information being put out under the banner of, say, the BBC,
Guardian or Daily Telegraph cannot be overestimated. This is one of the main
reasons why the big players will eventually dominate on the Net as far as news serv-
ices are concerned. Why get your news from Joe Bloggs’ website when you can go
direct to the BBC or the Daily Telegraph and get a validated service from a provider
you already trust?
Some organisations are seeking to put together a regulation body to validate web-
sites by ensuring they stick to a code of conduct. The anarchic background from
which the World Wide Web sprang makes it very resistant to this sort of change.
Most users are more concerned about the risk of censorship than they are about val-
idating the information on the Web.
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Case study 18.1 Small fish in a big pond

Because internet material is self-generated but widely available, a small organisation can
put out masses of material and make itself appear to be a big player with more influ-
ence than its real power base. A number of organisations have now seen that this is an
ideal way to contact young, literate, moderately wealthy individuals. Cult religions, pol-
itical and religious extremists, as well as small but financially strong pressure groups,
are starting to use the internet to attract this key audience which is growing by the
thousands every day. For instance, creation–evolution theory has attracted support
amongst fundamentalist Christians in the US southern states before and since the
Scopes monkey trial. A law proposing equal time for creation-science and evolution-
science in Arkansas schools was opposed by individual plaintiffs, who included the
resident Arkansas Bishops of the United Methodist, Episcopal, Roman Catholic and
African Methodist Episcopal Churches, the principal official of the Presbyterian
Churches in Arkansas, other United Methodist, Southern Baptist and Presbyterian
clergy, as well as several persons who sued as parents and friends of minor children
attending Arkansas public schools. Organisations included the American Jewish
Congress, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the American Jewish
Committee, the Arkansas Education Association, the National Association of Biology
Teachers and the National Coalition for Public Education and Religious Liberty. The
plaintiffs won their case to have evolution taught as the main theory of human devel-
opment in those schools. Yet a quick search on the internet using the word ‘creation’
produced more than thirty websites in favour of creation-biology compared with only
fifteen for evolution. A small but vocal and determined minority had been able to build
up their pet theories to appear far more widely believed than they really are.
Many governments are keen to bring in regulation, particularly over por-

nography on the Net. There are now several software systems designed to allow
parents to prevent their children accessing sexually explicit sites. Ofcom has a
specific duty to regulate at least some part of the internet. And the PCC also wants
to regulate sites linked to publishers. The PCC said in its 1997 Annual Report: ‘The
PCC has extended its jurisdiction to certain publications on the internet – making
it, as far as it is possible to discern, the first press self-regulatory body anywhere in
the world to do so.’ It said that any newspaper or magazine that currently sub-
scribed to the Code of Practice would have this extended to their internet version
(PCC 1997: 6).
Multi-media journalism
As technology develops, so the old divisions between radio, TV and press grow nar-
rower. Journalists already work in all three fields at once on the internet and this
development is likely to continue. This will almost certainly combine with some
level of interactivity with the consumer, probably linked with digital TV. At the time
of writing digital TV was only just developing from a sophisticated way of pro-
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Convergence 297
viding us with more channels, and therefore more programmes with higher quality
transmission to a system with added value and interactivity. But the cabling of the
UK, combined with the power of the internet, opens all sorts of possibilities.
Interactivity means that advertisers, publishers and broadcasters will be able to
build up complex databases on our likes and dislikes and feed us information,
advertising and programming, both passive and active, that are tightly targeted at
our individual needs and desires. This already happens to a limited extent through
the post. Junk mail is becoming much more tightly focused to our needs and wants.
Digital TV and the internet can take this a stage further. This may well mean that
the present regulatory councils will need to be adjusted and it will become
important to have a multi-media ethics council that is able to consider the problems
of broadcasters, advertisers and publishers. With statutory regulation largely in
place for broadcast, but desperately avoided by publishing, this will cause some fric-
tion. Will the government of the day be prepared to give up statutory regulation?
Will the publishers be prepared to take on statutory regulation? Will TV broadcast
on the internet be regulated by the Broadcasting Act or will it be unregulated? With
the growth of cable, satellite and digital broadcasting, the old argument for regu-
lated, impartial TV and radio will become less compelling and many of the present
conglomerate owners, who are also the driving forces behind the new communi-
cation methods, will be pressing for more open forms of regulation or even total
deregulation. Adult, subscription-only channels will become available.
Convergence
Ofcom is already configured to accept a future that will rely on convergence. We will
no longer see the distinct split between radio, TV, print and internet. Instead we will
download video through the internet to watch in high definition, or video phone calls
will come direct to the TV and our radio will have pictures or supporting text. We will
access the internet on our TV sets and use our mobile phones to watch TV. Eventually
all these technologies will become intertwined and indistinguishable. We will consume
the media of our choice when we want and where we want. This will pose huge prob-
lems for suppliers, but particularly for regulators. How can children be protected if
there is no longer a watershed, if we all watch TV when we want and are able to
download anything from comedies to pornography to any device of our choice?
There are also social problems. If we all have a combination machine that
receives calls, shows video, accesses the internet anytime, anywhere, will our
relationships with others change? We can see hints of that now with tables of people
in restaurants all on the phone to others outside the group, at much the same time.
The biggest change that is likely to come though is a growth in interactivity. Readers’
pictures, readers’ letters have existed almost since newspapers began, but the internet
and mobile phone technology make them easily accessible to all. Blogs and citizen jour-
nalism will grow although I personally doubt if blogs will ever be anything more than
readers’ letters, even if they do enable some people with something important to say to
gain access to an audience much more easily than would be the case today.
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AP P E N D I X 1:
P C C C O D E O F P RACTI C E
The Press Complaints Commission is charged with enforcing the following Code of
Practice which was framed by the newspaper and periodical industry and was rati-
fied by the PCC on 07 August 2006.
The Code
All members of the press have a duty to maintain the highest professional standards.
This Code sets the benchmark for those ethical standards, protecting both the rights
of the individual and the public’s right to know. It is the cornerstone of the system
of self-regulation to which the industry has made a binding commitment.
It is essential that an agreed code be honoured not only to the letter but in the
full spirit. It should not be interpreted so narrowly as to compromise its commit-
ment to respect the rights of the individual, nor so broadly that it constitutes an
unnecessary interference with freedom of expression or prevents publication in the
public interest.
It is the responsibility of editors and publishers to implement the Code and they
should take care to ensure it is observed rigorously by all editorial staff and external
contributors, including non-journalists, in printed and online versions of publica-
tions.
Editors should co-operate swiftly with the PCC in the resolution of complaints.
Any publication judged to have breached the Code must print the adjudication in
full and with due prominence, including headline reference to the PCC.
1 Accuracy
(i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or
distorted information, including pictures.
(ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once
recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and
– where appropriate – an apology published.
(iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between
comment, conjecture and fact.
(iv) A publication must report fairly and accurately the outcome of an
action for defamation to which it has been a party, unless an agreed
settlement states otherwise, or an agreed statement is published.
2 Opportunity to reply
A fair opportunity for reply to inaccuracies must be given when reasonably
called for.
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Appendix 1: PCC Code of Practice 299
3 *Privacy
(i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life,
home, health and correspondence, including digital communications.
Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s
private life without consent.
(ii) It is unacceptable to photograph individuals in private places without
their consent.
Note – Private places are public or private property where there is a
reasonable expectation of privacy.
4 *Harassment
(i) Journalists must not engage in intimidation, harassment or persistent
pursuit.
(ii) They must not persist in questioning, telephoning, pursuing or
photographing individuals once asked to desist; nor remain on their
property when asked to leave and must not follow them.
(iii) Editors must ensure these principles are observed by those working for
them and take care not to use non-compliant material from other
sources.
5 Intrusion into grief or shock
(i) In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches
must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled
sensitively. This should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings,
such as inquests.
*(ii) When reporting suicide, care should be taken to avoid excessive detail
about the method used.
6 *Children
(i) Young people should be free to complete their time at school without
unnecessary intrusion.
(ii) A child under 16 must not be interviewed or photographed on issues
involving their own or another child’s welfare unless a custodial parent
or similarly responsible adult consents.
(iii) Pupils must not be approached or photographed at school without the
permission of the school authorities.
(iv) Minors must not be paid for material involving children’s welfare, nor
parents or guardians for material about their children or wards, unless
it is clearly in the child’s interest.
(v) Editors must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or
guardian as sole justification for publishing details of a child’s private
life.
7 *Children in sex cases
1. The press must not, even if legally free to do so, identify children under
16 who are victims or witnesses in cases involving sex offences.
2. In any press report of a case involving a sexual offence against a child:
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300 Appendix 1: PCC Code of Practice
(i) The child must not be identified.

(ii) The adult may be identified.
(iii) The word “incest” must not be used where a child victim might be identified.
(iv) Care must be taken that nothing in the report implies the relationship
between the accused and the child.
8 *Hospitals
(i) Journalists must identify themselves and obtain permission from a
responsible executive before entering non-public areas of hospitals or
similar institutions to pursue enquiries.
(ii) The restrictions on intruding into privacy are particularly relevant to
enquiries about individuals in hospitals or similar institutions.
9 *Reporting of crime
(i) Relatives or friends of persons convicted or accused of crime should not
generally be identified without their consent, unless they are genuinely
relevant to the story.
(ii) Particular regard should be paid to the potentially vulnerable position
of children who witness, or are victims of, crime. This should not
restrict the right to report legal proceedings.
10 *Clandestine devices and subterfuge
(i) The press must not seek to obtain or publish material acquired by using
hidden cameras or clandestine listening devices; or by intercepting
private or mobile telephone calls, messages or emails; or by the
unauthorised removal of documents or photographs.
(ii) Engaging in misrepresentation or subterfuge can generally be justified
only in the public interest and then only when the material cannot be
obtained by other means.
11 Victims of sexual assault
The press must not identify victims of sexual assault or publish material likely
to contribute to such identification unless there is adequate justification and
they are legally free to do so.
12 Discrimination
(i) The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an
individual’s race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any
physical or mental illness or disability.
(ii) Details of an individual’s race, colour, religion, sexual orientation,
physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely
relevant to the story.
13 Financial journalism
(i) Even where the law does not prohibit it, journalists must not use
for their own profit financial information they receive in advance of
its general publication, nor should they pass such information to
others.
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Appendix 1: PCC Code of Practice 301
(ii) They must not write about shares or securities in whose performance
they know that they or their close families have a significant financial
interest without disclosing the interest to the editor or financial editor.
(iii) They must not buy or sell, either directly or through nominees or
agents, shares or securities about which they have written recently or
about which they intend to write in the near future.
14 Confidential sources
Journalists have a moral obligation to protect confidential sources of
information.
15 Witness payments in criminal trials
(i) No payment or offer of payment to a witness – or any person who may
reasonably be expected to be called as a witness – should be made in
any case once proceedings are active as defined by the Contempt of
Court Act 1981.
This prohibition lasts until the suspect has been freed unconditionally
by police without charge or bail or the proceedings are otherwise
discontinued; or has entered a guilty plea to the court; or, in the event
of a not guilty plea, the court has announced its verdict.
*(ii) Where proceedings are not yet active but are likely and foreseeable,
editors must not make or offer payment to any person who may
reasonably be expected to be called as a witness, unless the information
concerned ought demonstrably to be published in the public interest and
there is an over-riding need to make or promise payment for this to be
done; and all reasonable steps have been taken to ensure no financial
dealings influence the evidence those witnesses give. In no circumstances
should such payment be conditional on the outcome of a trial.
*(iii) Any payment or offer of payment made to a person later cited to give
evidence in proceedings must be disclosed to the prosecution and
defence. The witness must be advised of this requirement.
16 *Payment to criminals
(i) Payment or offers of payment for stories, pictures or information, which
seek to exploit a particular crime or to glorify or glamorise crime in
general, must not be made directly or via agents to convicted or
confessed criminals or to their associates – who may include family,
friends and colleagues.
(ii) Editors invoking the public interest to justify payment or offers would
need to demonstrate that there was good reason to believe the public
interest would be served. If, despite payment, no public interest
emerged, then the material should not be published.
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302 Appendix 1: PCC Code of Practice
The public interest

There may be exceptions to the clauses marked * where they can be demonstrated
to be in the public interest.
1. The public interest includes, but is not confined to:
(i) Detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety.
(ii) Protecting public health and safety.
(iii) Preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an
individual or organisation.
2. There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself.
3. Whenever the public interest is invoked, the PCC will require editors to
demonstrate fully how the public interest was served.
4. The PCC will consider the extent to which material is already in the public
domain, or will become so.
5. In cases involving children under 16, editors must demonstrate an exceptional
public interest to over-ride the normally paramount interest of the child.
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AP P E N D I X 2:
N UJ C O D E O F C O N D U CT
1. A journalist has a duty to maintain the highest professional and ethical

standards.
2. A journalist shall at all times defend the principle of the freedom of the press
and other media in relation to the collection of information and the
expression of comment and criticism. He/she shall strive to eliminate
distortion, news suppression and censorship.
3. A journalist shall strive to ensure that the information he/she disseminates is
fair and accurate, avoid the expression of comment and conjecture as
established fact and falsification by distortion, selection or misrepresentation.
4. A journalist shall rectify promptly any harmful inaccuracies, ensure that
correction and apologies receive due prominence and afford the right of reply
to persons criticised when the issue is of sufficient importance.
5. A journalist shall obtain information, photographs and illustrations only by
straightforward means. The use of other means can be justified only by
overriding considerations of the public interest. The journalist is entitled to
exercise a personal conscientious objection to the use of such means.
6. A journalist shall do nothing which entails intrusion into anybody’s private
life, grief or distress, subject to justification by overriding considerations of
the public interest.
7. A journalist shall protect confidential sources of information.
8. A journalist shall not accept bribes nor shall he/she allow other inducements
to influence the performance of his/her professional duties.
9. A journalist shall not lend himself/herself to the distortion or suppression of
the truth because of advertising or other considerations.
10. A journalist shall mention a person’s age, sex, race, colour, creed,
illegitimacy, disability, marital status, or sexual orientation only if this
information is strictly relevant. A journalist shall neither originate nor process
material which encourages discrimination, ridicule, prejudice or hatred on
any of the above-mentioned grounds.
11. A journalist shall not interview or photograph children in connection with
stories concerning their welfare without the permission of a parent or other
adult responsible for their welfare.
12. No journalist shall knowingly cause or allow the publication or broadcast of
a photograph that has been manipulated unless that photograph is clearly
labelled as such. Manipulation does not include normal dodging, burning,
colour balancing, spotting, contrast adjustment, cropping and obvious
masking for legal or safety reasons.
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304 Appendix 2: N UJ Code of Conduct
13. A journalist shall not take private advantage of information gained in the
course of his/her duties before the information is public knowledge.
14. A journalist shall not by way of statement, voice or appearance endorse by
advertisement any commercial product or service save for the promotion of
his/her own work or of the medium by which he/she is employed.
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AP P E N D I X 3:
N UJ WO R KI N G P RACTI C E S
1. A member shall study and obey the rules of the union and the code of
conduct.
2. A member shall not act, by commission or omission, against the interests of
the union or of the trade union movement.
3. A member who is terminating his/her employment shall give notice according
to individual or collective agreement or custom and practice unless the
employer consents to a variation.
4. A member shall not, by unfair methods, seek promotion to or obtain the
position of another journalist.
5. A member shall not exploit the labour of another journalist by plagiarism or
the unauthorised use of his/her work for any purpose.
6. A member who does lineage work shall surrender part or whole of that work
to conform with any pooling scheme approved by the NEC to provide a
member with a livelihood.
7. A member who is a staff reporter shall not normally take photographs and a
member who is a staff photographer shall not normally report. Freelance
reporters shall not take photographs or freelance photographers report, if by
so doing they deprive another freelance of income.
8. Members shall ensure, by support of union organisation and of their
colleagues, that participation in union activity does not damage a member’s
employment, advancement or employment prospects.
9. A member shall not directly or indirectly attempt to obtain for himself/herself
or anyone else any regular or occasional lineage work, connection or
commission which is rightfully undertaken by another member.
10. A member in staff employment shall first serve the organisation which
employs him/her. In his/her own time, a member is free to engage in
journalistic work, provided that in so doing he/she is neither depriving a
freelance or unemployed member of work nor occupying a job which would
normally be a full-time staff position; and provided that he/she has contacted
the chapel in the office in which the work is to be done and established that
he/she is not taking work which can be undertaken by a freelance or
unemployed member.
11. A member in a position to commission freelance work shall always attempt
to offer it first to a freelance or unemployed member of the union. No
member with authority to commission work shall attempt to induce any
freelance or casual to perform work for a lower rate of pay or under less
favourable conditions than those laid down by any union agreement covering
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306 Appendix 3: N UJ Working Practices
the work in question, or to allocate work to any non-member unless he/she

can prove to his/her branch that no suitable member is available and willing
to do the work in question. A member who commissions work shall do all in
his or her power to ensure payments are made on time.
12. A member shall treat other journalists with consideration.
13. A member shall not accept employment on terms and conditions inferior to
those provided for in collective agreements which apply to his/her place of
work.
14. It shall be the duty of any member to inform his/her F/MoC of his/her terms
and conditions of employment, on request.
15. Freelance members of the union employing salaried assistants shall do so in
all respects in accordance with union agreements, the policies of the union
and the recognised customs and practices of journalism.
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AP P E N D I X 4:
B B C C O D E O F ETH I C S
The BBC has one of the most comprehensive codes of ethics for journalists and
broadcasters in the world. It is too long to publish here but is available on the Web
at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/
The guidelines explain the BBC’s values and standards regarding impartiality,
accuracy, fairness, privacy, taste and decency, violence, minors and conflicts of
interest. Aspects of reporting, including interviewing and confidentiality, are also
covered, as are elements of the law such as defamation and copyright.
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AP P E N D I X 5: I NTE R NATI O NAL

F E D E RATI O N O F J O U R NALI STS
Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of Journalists
Adopted by the Second World Congress of the International Federation of

Journalists at Bordeaux on 25–28 April 1954 and amended by the 18th IFJ World
Congress in Helsingör on 2–6 June 1986.
This international Declaration is proclaimed as a standard of professional
conduct for journalists engaged in gathering, transmitting, disseminating and com-
menting on news and information and in describing events.
1. Respect for truth and for the right of the public to truth is the first duty of the
journalist.
2. In pursuance of this duty, the journalist shall at all times defend the principles
of freedom in the honest collection and publication of news, and of the right of
fair comment and criticism.
3. The journalist shall report only in accordance with facts of which he/she knows
the origin. The journalist shall not suppress essential information or falsify
documents.
4. The journalist shall use only fair methods to obtain news, photographs and
documents.
5. The journalist shall do the utmost to rectify any published information which is
found to be harmfully inaccurate.
6. The journalist shall observe professional secrecy regarding the source of
information obtained in confidence.
7. The journalist shall be aware of the danger of discrimination being furthered by
the media, and shall do the utmost to avoid facilitating such discrimination
based on, among other things, race, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion,
political or other opinions, and national or social origins.
8. The journalist shall regard as grave professional offences the following:
plagiarism, malicious misrepresentation, calumny, slander, libel, unfounded
accusations, acceptance of a bribe in any form in consideration of either
publication or suppression.
9. Journalists worthy of that name shall deem it their duty to observe faithfully
the principles stated above. Within the general law of each country the
journalist shall recognise in professional matters the jurisdiction of colleagues
only, to the exclusion of every kind of interference by governments or others.
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AP P E N D I X 6: O F C O M
B R OAD CASTI N G C O D E
The Code is too lengthy to publish in full here but covers the following principles:
• To ensure that people under eighteen are protected.
• To ensure that generally accepted standards are applied to the contents of
television and radio services so as to provide adequate protection for members of
the public from the inclusion in such services of harmful and/or offensive material.
• To ensure that material likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or
to lead to disorder is not included in television or radio services.
• To ensure that broadcasters exercise the proper degree of responsibility with
respect to the content of programmes which are religious programmes.
• To ensure that religious programmes do not involve any improper exploitation
of any susceptibilities of the audience for such a programme.
• To ensure that religious programmes do not involve any abusive treatment of
the religious views and beliefs of those belonging to a particular religion or
religious denomination.
• To ensure that news, in whatever form, is reported with due accuracy and
presented with due impartiality.
• To ensure that the special impartiality requirements of the Act are complied with.
• To ensure that the special impartiality requirements in the Communications Act
2003, and other legislation relating to broadcasting on elections and
referendums, are applied at the time of elections and referendums.
• To ensure that broadcasters avoid unjust or unfair treatment of individuals or
organisations in programmes.
• To ensure that broadcasters avoid any unwarranted infringement of privacy in
programmes and in connection with obtaining material included in
programmes.
• To ensure that the unsuitable sponsorship of programmes on radio and
television is prevented, with particular reference to:
• transparency – to ensure sponsorship arrangements are transparent;
• separation – to ensure that sponsorship messages are separate from
programmes and to maintain a distinction between advertising and
sponsorship; and
• editorial independence – to ensure that the broadcaster maintains editorial
control over sponsored programmes and that programmes are not distorted
for commercial purposes.
• To ensure that the independence of editorial control over programme content is
maintained and that programmes are not distorted for commercial purposes.
• To ensure that the advertising and programme elements of a service are clearly
separated.
(http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/codes/bcode/ofcom-broadcasting-code.pdf)
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AP P E N D I X 7: TMAP G U I D E LI N E S
TMAP Guidelines for Coverage of Sexual Subject Matter in Teenage Magazines

1.1 The guidelines are the outcome of discussions between publishers of
teenage magazines (represented through the Periodical Publishers
Association [PPA]), retailers of teenage magazines (represented by, among
others, the British Retail Consortium [BRC], National Federation of Retail
Newsagents [NFRN], the Multiple Newsagents Association [MNA]) and
magazine editors (represented by the British Society of Magazine Editors
[BSME]).
1.2 The guidelines cover the editorial content of teenage magazines. The final
arbiter of the meaning and interpretation of the Guidelines is the Teenage
Magazine Arbitration Panel (TMAP), to whom any complaints relating to
alleged infractions of the Guidelines should be addressed.
1.3 There is a separate code of practice relating to advertisements, which is
produced by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which is the final
arbiter in the meaning of the code of practice. The ASA deals with complaints
about advertisement content.
2.1 The guidelines apply to magazines published more than once a year when it
is apparent that young people aged under 16 comprise 25 per cent or more of
the total readership.
2.2 A list of such titles will be drawn up on the basis of the latest available
figures over a 12 month period, using the reports of the Youth Target Group
Index survey (Youth TGI) or other figures or bases accepted by the TMAP.
General principles and procedures

3.1 Readers will always be encouraged to take a responsible attitude to sex and
contraception, and where relevant to seek advice from General Practitioners
and other professionals.
3.2 If sex is being discussed, then safer sex will be highlighted and encouraged
wherever relevant.
3.3 Where under-age sex or sexual abuse is discussed it will be clearly stated as
illegal. Under-age sex will be discouraged and the age of consent clearly
stated.
3.4 Editorial advice will be given in good faith, with relevant professional
organisations contacted for guidelines and named within the editorial if
appropriate.
3.5 Readers will be encouraged to seek support from parents, guardians or other
responsible adults wherever relevant . The emotional consequences of sexual
activity will be highlighted where relevant.
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Appendix 7: TMAP guidelines 311
3.6 The editorial content of the magazines will reflect the typical concerns of the
magazine’s readership, with advice given to provide readers with relevant and
responsible answers to their concerns.
3.7 It is recognised that magazines have an important role to play in the field of
sex education for, and emotional development of, teenagers.
Implementation and assessment

4.1 Publishers of teenage magazines containing subject matter on sexual issues
are responsible for ensuring that editorial policies for their magazines fall
within the guidelines.
4.2 Editorial policies with regard to the publication of subject matter on sexual
issues will be formally recorded by the publishers. All editorial staff employed
to work on such subject matter will be instructed on the magazine’s editorial
policy and informed of any changes to that policy if relevant.
4.3 Editorial instruction will incorporate clear examples of appropriate and
inappropriate editorial treatment of subject matter on sexual issues.
4.4 Each magazine will appoint an independent consultant of good standing to
advise the editor on an ongoing basis with regard to sexual, emotional and
moral issues.
4.5 An annual audit will be conducted by TMAP to ensure published material
(those titles listed as a result of 2.2, plus any other titles apparently aimed at
the defined readership) falls within the Guidelines.
4.6 All teenage magazines containing problem pages will ensure that published
letters are based on genuine letters received by those magazines.
4.7 All published responses to letters on problem pages will be provided by
relevant, professionally qualified advisors. Relevant qualifications will be
approved by the TMAP.
Retail display
5.1 Publishers will advise distributors and retailers of the appropriate display
category of their magazines.
5.2 Distributors and retailers should ensure that displays of magazines reflect the
perceived age of purchasers, as communicated by publishers.
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AP P E N D I X 8: AD D R E S S E S F O R
R E G U LATO RY B O D I E S
British Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcasting House, London, W12 7RJ
Tel: 44 (0)208 743 8000
http://www.BBC.co.uk
National Union of Journalists

Headland House, 308-312 Gray’s Inn Road, London, WC1X 8DP
Tel: 44 (0)207 278 7916 Fax: 44 (0)207 837 8143
e-mail: Acorn.house@nuj.org.uk
http://www.nuj.org.uk
Ofcom
Riverside House, 2a Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9HA
Tel: 44 (0)207 981 3000 Fax: 44 (0)207 981 3333
http://www.ofcom.org.uk
Press Complaints Commission

Halton House, 20/23 Holborn, London EC1N 2JD
Tel: 44 (0)207 831 0022 Fax: 44 (0)207 831 0025
http://www.pcc.org.uk
Press Standards Board of Finance

Merchants House Buildings, 30 George Square, Glasgow, G2 1EG
European Broadcasting Union

17A Ancienne Route
1218 Grand-Saconnex
Switzerland
Tel: 41 (0)22 717 2111
Fax: 41 (0)22 747 4000
JOUR_Z01.QXP 8/2/07 10:54 Page 313
G LO S SARY
Broadcasters Television and radio equivalent of newspaper proprietors.

Consumers A collective term used to refer to readers of publications, viewers of TV, listeners
to radio, internet surfers, teletext viewers and other information receivers. By this term I mean
they are consuming the information provided by a journalist, not that they are necessarily
buying the product, whether it is a publication or a broadcast.
Hard news A term used by journalists to mean stories that have immediate impact and drama.
They must be topical. Plane crashes, deaths, political decisions, stock market crashes, murder,
court verdicts and anything which involves shouting ‘stop the press’ is hard news.
Soft news This is a term used by journalists to define stories that do not have immediate
impact. Often such stories have more of a manufactured feel to them as a PR agency or a
journalist has tried to build them up into a hard news story – known as giving the story a
harder edge. Soft news stories are likely to be about people, possibly showbiz, certainly gossipy,
or about events which do not have immediate impact. Often soft news stories are used as
features, and many features are soft news stories.
Information Used in its widest sense to mean anything that is printed by magazines or
newspapers or transmitted in news and current affairs programmes by radio and television or
over electronic systems as part of the editorial content. In this context it can mean ‘hard news’,
‘soft news’, analysis, comment, opinion, conjecture, and so on.
Publish Includes broadcast as well as publication in the traditional senses.
Reader Used as a general term to mean receivers of the message when this is transmitted by
print.
JOUR_Z01.QXP 8/2/07 10:54 Page 314
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Internet sites of interest

UK Parliament: http://www.parliament.uk
European codes of conduct can be found at: http://www.uta.fi/ethicnet/
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport: http://www.DCMS.gov.uk
The BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk
BBC Producers’ Guidelines: http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/editorial/prodgl/index.htm
Open Media Research Institute: http://www.omri.cz/index.html
Journalism UK: http://www.octopod.demon.co.uk/journ_UK.htm
Journalism news: http://bcn.boulder.co.us/campuspress/sjmc/journnews.html
European journalism: http://www.demon.co.uk/eurojournalism/
Ofcom: http://www.ofcom.org.uk
Press Complaints Commission: http://www.pcc.org.uk
National Union of Journalists: http://www.nuj.org.uk
Reporters Sans Frontières: http://www.rsf.org
European Broadcasting Union: http://www.ebu.ch/
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I N D EX
A-list celebrities 34–5 Beauchamp, Tom L. 1

abdication crisis 223 Beckham, David (and family) 3, 31–2
absolute power 19–20 Belarus 289
absolutes, moral 13 Belgium 48, 91
accountability 190–6 Bell, Martin 76–8, 194
accuracy in reporting 82–3, 149, 158 Belsey, Andrew 2
addresses beneficence, duty of 17
publication of 153–5, 252 Benn, Tony 237
of regulatory bodies 312 Bentham, Jeremy 15
advertisers, influence of 60, 123–7, 189, Bertrand, Claude-Jean 190, 195
215–16, 237–8 Bhoyrul, Anil 123
advertising as editorial 150–2 bias 72–3, 86, 149
AIDS 186 Biblical teaching 14
Aitken, Jonathan 48, 194 Big Brother 73, 90, 190
Al-Fayed, Dodi 47 Bigley, Kenneth 272
Al-Fayed, Mohammed 48 bigotry 167
Alfred, King 51 bills of rights 19, 21, 38
Algeria 287–8 Birt, John 53
Ali G 32 Bizarre magazine 171
Allen, Jamie 194 Blair, Cherie 118, 139–40
Amari, Chawki 288 Blair, Sir Ian 68, 116
Andre, Judith 166 Blair, Tony 4, 97–8, 139–40, 153, 230
Andrews, Sir Linton 211–14 Bland, Sir Christopher 243, 273
Annan Committee 237–9 Blom-Cooper, Louis 220
anonymity, requests for 156, 176 Bogart, John B. 24
anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) 135–8 Bok, Sissela 89
apologies, publication of 84, 261 Bolland, Mark 222, 228
Archard, D. 89 boredom threshold 81–2
archive material, use of 162–3 Borzello, Rob 232
Aristotle 12–14, 132 Bottomley, Virginia 96, 226–8, 241
Ash, Niema 109 Brady, Ian 106, 216
Ashworth Hospital 146 brand names, use of 151
Associated Press 281–2 breach of confidence 96, 108, 254
Astor, J.J. 211–12 bribery 123, 125, 183, 253
asylum seekers 133–4, 172, 186 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 43,
atheism 66 64, 66–7, 72, 82–7, 91, 102–5, 112, 117–18,
Australia 44, 201 121–9, 132–5, 143–8, 151–2, 161–2,
authoritarianism 19 169–70, 173, 181–2, 188, 190, 196, 200,
Ayer, A.J. 17 206, 234–7, 240–6, 249, 268–76, 293, 295
Board of Governors 244, 272, 275
B-list celebrities 35 Charter 169, 190, 200, 237, 268, 272–5
background sounds 163 code of ethics 307
balance 72, 78–9, 238 Editorial Standards Committee (ESC)
balancing of rights 252 273
Bar Council 230 future prospects for 275
BBC see British Broad-casting Corporation regulation of 273
Beale, Ian 232 World Service 52–3
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324 I n d ex
British National Party 114 as witnesses 140

broadband technology 245 protection of 254, 286, 259
broadcast media rights of 134–6
other journalists’ use of 184 see also minors
particular issues for 160–3, 187–8 Children Acts (1989 and 2004) 96, 99,
Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC) 134–7
128, 220, 239–41, 250, 267–8 Children and Young Persons Act (1933)
Broadcasting Standards Commission 111, 202, 134–5, 137, 212
241, 245, 250 China 61
Broadcasting Standards Council 239–41, 250, Christianity 14
267–8 Christians, Clifford 1, 9, 91
Brooke, Henry 214 circulation figures 32–4, 206–7
Browne, John 96 citizen journalism 291, 297
BSkyB 61, 126, 150 citizens as distinct from consumers 269
Bulger, Jamie 135 Citizens’ Charter 249
Bundock, A. 208 civil law 191, 257–8
Burton Mail 84 Clarke, Charles 187
Byford, Mark 243 Clarkson, Jeremy 125
Clissitt, Willie C. 217
C-list celebrities 35 closed-circuit television (CCTV) 111, 162
Calcutt, Sir David (and Calcutt Reports) 93, ‘cod fax’ issue 48, 51
96, 198, 200, 214, 220–6, 260 codes of conduct 2–4, 16, 45, 58, 63–4, 70,
Camelot 155–6 82–7, 91, 93, 97, 101–4, 112–14, 118–29,
cameras, hidden 115, 162 133–5, 138, 146–7, 154, 156, 167–72, 180,
Campaign for Freedom of Information 41 191–200, 207–10, 219–22, 225, 228–32
Campbell, Alistair 178 for broadcasting 235–6, 245, 261, 264,
Campbell, Naomi 3, 98, 107–8 274–7
Caplin, Carole 118 development of 250–1
Caroline, Princess of Monaco 107, 285 framing of 249
Carswell, Lord 108 functionally-based and rightsbased 251–3
Carter-Ruck (legal practice) 106 functions of 248–9
Cash, William 95–6 length and complexity of 250–1, 254–6
caste system 13 moral basis of 247–9
categorical imperative 14–16, 57–9, 248–9 in other countries 280–3, 286
Caterham Comet Leader 171 personal and public 247
Cave, Edward 217 and professionals 254–6
celebrities 28–31, 34–5, 40, 45, 88, 99, 106–7, as a regulatory system 246–56
193, 207, 219, 281, 292 Cohen, Elliott 2
children as 140 Cohen, Stanley 25
children of 139–40 Cohen-Almagor, Raphael 171–2
censorship 49–50, 166, 227, 260, 287, 295 Cole, Ashley 34, 164
Chadwick, Ruth 2 colour television 236
Channel 4 194, 239, 241, 244, 272 comment in the media 72, 86, 253
Channel 5 241 communication technology 63; see also e-mail;
Chapman, Patsie 222 internet resources; mobile phones
Charles, Prince of Wales 4, 139–40, 222, 228 Company magazine 168
Charter Commissioner 231–2, 266 compensation for infringements of privacy
Charter Compliance Panel 266 227–8
Chat magazine 34 Competition Commission 267
chequebook journalism 128–9 complaints
children about broadcasting 236–42, 250, 273
as offenders 140–2 about print media 210–13, 219–28, 261–2,
as victims 142–3 267
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Index 325
from other journalists 215–16, 277 D-Notices 217

from third parties 227, 232, 262–6 Daily Express 28, 32, 85, 143, 217, 265
conciliation 264 Daily Mail 28, 32, 34, 96, 106, 157, 175, 181–2
conditional fee arrangements (CFAs) 193 Daily Record 143
confidence, law of 97–8, 108, 260 Daily Star 32, 146, 180, 193, 280
confidential sources 119–21, 129, 207, 212 Daily Telegraph 32–3, 54, 61, 141, 170, 173,
confidentiality 194, 295
between journalists and editors 121–2 damages 130
duty of 156, 254 dangerous journalistic assignments 63
conflicts of interest 16, 126–7 Data Protection Acts 95–8, 130, 186, 259
conscience clause 205 Davies, Christie 166
consequentialism 17–18, 248 Dean, John 212
Conservative Party 54, 150, 157, 237, 239 decency, standards of 165–6, 169–72, 236–9,
constitutional provisions 19, 91, 278–83; 253, 258, 286
see also United States, Constitution of Declaration of Principles on the Conduct of
constraints on the media 191–5 Journalists (IFJ, 1954) 214–15
consumers of media products 269 text of 308
blaming of 47 defamation 51, 58, 102, 129–30, 163–4, 184,
contacts, journalistic 62 192, 258, 287
contempt of court 127–8, 214, 230 democratic decision-making 42, 55
Contempt of Court Act (1981) 45–6, 120 Denmark 119, 133, 167
Content Sanctions Committee (of Ofcom) Dennis, Les 32
270–1 deontological approach 17–18, 119, 247–8, 253
contracts of employment, editors’ and Derby Express 150
journalists’ 4, 227 Devlin, Lord 216–17
Controlled Event Solutions 115 Dhavan, Rajeev 166
convergence of technologies 268, 297 Diana, Princess of Wales 47, 64, 80, 91, 96,
Cook, Roger 287 114, 135, 146, 200, 202, 225, 230, 262, 277
Cooley, Thomas 29, 92 digital broadcasting 5, 188, 241–2, 245, 270,
copyright infringements 294 296–7
Coronation Street 32 Dill, Barbara 280
coroners’ courts 157, 259 disasters, journalistic treatment of 146–7, 160,
corrections, publication of 83–4, 261 239
costs of media distribution, control of 195 discrimination 133, 147–8, 198, 219, 252
Council of Europe Resolution 1003 279 divorce 94, 99, 259
County Councils Association 212 domestic violence 147, 155
Court of Appeal 108 Donaldson, Sir John 96–7
Cowen, Sir Zelman 220 doorstepping 105
Crawford, Nelson Antrim 207, 281 Douglas, Michael 35, 98, 110
creation-science 296 Drop the Dead Donkey 163
credibility of news stories and of journalists drugs, legalisation of 54
40–1, 54, 295 Dubs, Lord 241
crime, reporting of 145 dumbing-down 28, 35
Criminal Justice Act (1967) 217 Dunbar, Robin 30
criminal law 257–8 duties of journalists 46–51, 58–9, 172, 180,
Crissell, Andrew 236 252
Crone, T. 127 Dyke, Greg 243, 273
cross-border working 294
cross-media ownership 240, 242 e-mail 291
Cubbon, Brian 266 Ealing Vicarage rape case 138
Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the East Grinstead Observer 171
House of Commons 4, 94, 97, 231, 245 Economist Intelligence Unit report (1967) 217
Currie, David 268 Eden, Sir Anthony 212
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326 I n d ex
Edinburgh, Duke of 212 ‘fishing expeditions’ 105

editing process 158, 179 Flitcroft, Gary 109–10
editors, journalists’ loyalty to 60, 121–2 Foot, Paul 222
Educational Institute of Scotland 212 Footballers’ Wives 189
Egypt 288 Ford, Anna 98, 110–11
Eliot Press 109 foreign news and pictures 160
Ellis, Vivian 158 Forth, Eric 154
Ellis, Vivienne 158 Fox Television 294
embargoes 183–4 France 45, 51, 91, 204, 285
embarrassment 280 free newspapers 170–1
emotivism 18 free speech see expression, freedom of
Empire News 214 ‘freebies’ 124–5
employment tribunals 259 Freedom of Information Act 41, 230, 258–9
The Engineer 120 freedom of the media (and press freedom) 6,
English, Sir David 2–3, 47, 138, 228–9 37–9, 208–9, 214, 221–3, 252, 257, 260,
Enron 231 278, 280
Eriksson, Sven Goran 115 and a democratic society 39–42
ethical egoism 14–15 limits to 44, 49–50
ethical issues facing journalists 59, 64, 112 and morality 43
ethical standards 187, 207, 234, 246, 251 public support for 49
enforcement of 192, 201–2 to publish 43–4, 49
ethics use of the phrase 43
definition of 9 freelance journalists 103–4, 202
professional 11–12 Fried, Charles 90
Eudaimonia 12–13 friendliness as a professional skill 174–5
Euro ’96 competition 232 functionalist element in codes of conduct 251,
European Broadcasting Union 276, 290 253
European Commission 225, 290 future prospects for the media 275–6, 291–7
European Commission for Human Rights 52
European Convention on Human Rights 19, Galtung, Johan 24–6
21, 38, 91, 93, 96–7, 107, 252, 278–9 Gardiner, Mark 155
European Court of Human Rights 111, Gateshead Post 183
119–20, 278 George X 137
Evening Standard (London) 154 Germany 51, 285–6
Evers, Huub 283 Gilligan, Andrew 112, 161, 243
exclusions from school 140–2 Glasser, Theodore L. 76
The Express on Sunday 143 Gluckman, Max 30–1
expression, freedom of (and freedom of speech) God, belief in 66
38–9, 49–50, 55, 93, 106, 108, 169–72, ‘golden ages’ of journalism 205–6
208–9, 223, 248, 252–3, 257–8, 278–80 ‘golden mean’ theory 12–13, 132–3
limits to 165 Goldsmith, Lord 116
Goma, Guy 161
‘fair comment’ defence 258 good journalism, definition of 56–8
fairness 72, 76–9, 86, 104, 192, 201, 207, 269; Goodwin, Bill 119–20
see also trial procedures Gordon, David A. 248, 254
family courts, reporting on 157, 259 gossip 28–35, 91–2, 206–7
Fenton Atkinson J 216 definition of 29
fidelity, duties of 16 Grade, Michael 244, 272, 275
financial journalism 123, 186 Graf, Philip 268
Fine, Gary 29–31 grammatical adjustment of quotes 179
Finer, Morris 218 Granada TV 194
Finnegan, Judy 106 Grant, Alastair 213
Fisher, Fleur 267 gratitude, duty of 17
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Index 327
Green Party 86 Hobbes, Thomas 19–20

Greer, Germaine 113 Hoffmann, Lord 108
grief, intrusion into 104 homosexuality 211–12
The Guardian 32, 48, 51, 57, 116, 158–9, 194, Honours List 183; see also personal honour
293, 295 Hope, Lord 108
Guardian Media Group 196 hospitals, news-gathering in 112, 116–17, 255,
Guerin, Veronica 289 259, 280–1
guidelines for journalists 185–6 hotlines
Gummow, J. 109 for editors’ guidance 227, 261
for readers’ complaints 220
Halberstam, Joshua 43 House of Commons 160; see also Culture,
Hale, Lady 108 Media and Sport Committee; Heritage
Hamilton, Neil 194 Committee; Privacy and Media Intrusion,
Hamilton, Thomas 145 Select Committee on; Privileges
happiness 12, 14–15 Committee
harassment 103–6, 117–18, 144–7, 154, 156, House of Lords 107–8
186, 200–1, 223, 248 Howard, Lee 217
sexual 259 Howe, Lady 241
Harcup, Tony 24–5 human rights 19–21, 37–8, 99, 120, 156, 171,
Hare, R.M. 17 190, 252, 257
HarperCollins (publishers) 61 Human Rights Act (1998) 19, 21, 38, 52, 93–4,
Harris, Lord 238 97, 106, 108, 230, 257, 278
Harris, Geoffrey 2 Hurd, Douglas 132
Harris, Nigel G.E. 246–7 hurricanes 160
Harry, Prince 230 Hutton Report (2004) 118, 122, 161, 242–3,
Hartley, John 24–6, 67, 75 273
Hastings, Max 47 hyperlinks 164
Hawthorne, Keith 232 hypothetical imperative 16, 57–8
headlines 158
Health Education Authority 146 identity cards for journalists 48
Health Education Council 186 impartiality 72–9, 83, 86–7, 126–7, 149, 184–5,
Heat magazine 35, 292 205
Heath, Edward 237 and balance 78–9
Hello! magazine 34, 110 and bias 86
Hennessey, Martin 113 improvements in journalistic standards 233
Henry, Prince 139 inaccurate information 100–1, 187
Heritage Committee of the House of Commons incitement to violence or hatred 133, 154, 171
93, 96, 198–9, 224–7, 230 The Independent 32, 179
Hermes, Joke 29–31 Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA)
Hertzigova, Eva 32 237–40, 268
Hetherington, Alastair 24, 26 Independent Television Authority (ITA)
hidden cameras and microphones 115–16, 235–7
162 Independent Television Commission (ITC)
high-definition TV 235, 245 111, 240–1, 250, 268
Highland Herald 213 India 199, 201
Hillsborough disaster 82 influence of the media 40–1
Hindley, Myra 155, 216 information, access to 258–9
Hinduism 13 Information Commissioner 41
Hinton, Les 233 information overload 81–2
Hipwell, James 123 information-tracking 80–1
Hislop, Ian 130 injunctions 120, 155, 191
Hitchin, Brian 180 Innes, Judith 89–90
hoaxes 158–9, 295 Institute of Journalists 208, 219
JOUR_Z02.QXP 26/2/07 14:12 Page 328
328 I n d ex
interactivity 291, 293, 297 killings of journalists 289

interception of private communications 115 kiss-and-tell stories 90, 110
International Federation of Journalists 214, Klaidman, Stephen 1
219, 283, 286, 289, 308–9 Koch, Tom 71
internet resources 164, 188, 245, 291, 294–7
interviews 161, 175–80 Labour Party 150, 157, 238–9
on and off the record 177–8 Lambeth, E. 1
by telephone 180 language
intimacy, concept of 88–91, 97, 108 stigmatizing 146
intrusion 103–5, 108, 112, 187, 208, 219, 222, use of 180–2
224, 242, 280–1 Lawrence, Stephen 154
investigative journalism 45 lay membership of regulatory bodies 216–22,
Iran 288–9 225–7, 231, 260–1
Iraq 289 leaks 178, 223
Ireland 103, 233 legal controls over the media 3–5, 198–201,
Irish Republican Army (IRA) 50, 132 257–60, 283–4
Irvine, Lord 97 legislation
Islam 13 on privacy 92–103, 217, 224–7, 230–2, 242
Islamism 50 in relation to ethics 192
Italy 40, 48–50, 91, 129, 201, 283–5 Leighton, Jane 241
Levine, Ray 221
Jack J 110 Lewis, Martyn 26
James, P.D. 53 libel 38, 45, 101, 130, 158, 192, 207, 258, 280,
Jarecke, Kenneth 168 286
Jenkins, Roy 217, 238 library material, use of 162–3
Jerry Springer the Opera 169, 173 licensing
Jesus Christ 13 of broadcasting stations 240, 250
Jewish News 294 of journalists 195, 208
‘jigsaw identification’ 138, 164 of newspapers 213–14
John, Elton 32, 130 lies under oath 194
John Menzies (retailers) 168 light-touch regulation 270
Johnson, Samuel 71, 217 listening devices, clandestine 115
Jones, Sir Elwyn 216 Litterick, Tom 95
Jowell, Tessa 244 Llanelly Star 212
judicial review 110, 199 Llanelly Town Council 212
justice, duty of 17 Lloyd George, Gwilym 212–13
‘Justice’ Committee 92, 95 Loaded magazine 181
juxtaposition of material in newspapers 159 lobby briefings 178–9
local council matters 149–50
Kansas Editorial Association 281 local radio 236–7
Kant, Immanuel (and Kantian theory) 14–16, locations for broadcasting, choice of 163
57–8, 70, 246–9 Locke, John 37, 19–20
Kaye, Gordon 116, 221 London terrorist bombings (7 July 2005) 80,
Keeble, Richard 3 292
Kelly, David 161, 242–3 loyalties owed by journalists 17, 59–63, 151–2
Kemsley Manual of Journalism 1–2 Luff, Peter 168
Kennedy, John F. 202 Lukashenko, Alexander 289
Kent and Sussex Courier 153 Luxembourg 48
Kewney, Guy 161 Lyon, Alexander 95
Key 103 FM station 272
kidnaps 150 McCarthy, John 53
Kieran, Matthew 71, 74–5, 100–1 McColgan, John 159
Killer Instinct 189 McGregor, Ewan 109
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Index 329
McGregor, Oliver (later Lord McGregor of and truth 66–7

Duris) 218, 222–6, 260–1 see also ethical issues facing journalists
Mackay, Lord 120, 224, 229, 285–6 More, Jasper 217
McKennitt, Loreena 109 Morgan, Kenneth 220, 222, 228
Macmillan (publishers) 61 Morgan, Piers 123
McPherson, Elle 32 Morland J 107
The Mail on Sunday 98, 113, 118 Morse, Edward 205
malice 258 motivism 17–18, 166
Manchester United 114 Mubarak, Hosni 288–9
Mancroft, Lord 94 Mugabe, Robert 289
manipulation of pictorial images 85–6, 143, multi-media journalism 296–7
159, 277 multiplex broadcast channels 240–1
Mansfield, F.J. 1, 206–8 Murdoch, Rupert 61, 150, 222
Mark’s Gospel 13 Murray, George 214, 216
market forces 44–7 Muslim attitudes 167, 253
Marsh, Kevin 243
Maxwell, Robert 102 naming
Mayes, Ian 159 of children 135–42, 157, 193, 212
Mazur, Mahmoud 115 of lottery winners 155–6
media councils 200–1 of sources see sources of news stories,
media moguls 293 protection of
media silence 287 of those involved in legal proceedings 95–8,
meeting people 174–5 128, 285–6, 294
Melba, Dame Nellie 234 of those involved in news stories generally
Mellor, David 224 153–4
Menezes, Jean Charles de 68, 82 of vulnerable adults 143–5
mental health issues 145–6, 186 National Certificate Examination in Journalism
Metropolitan Police 68 138
Meyer, Sir Christopher 231, 233, 261 National Council for the Training of Journalists
Meyer, Philip 1, 30 (NCTJ) 2–3, 122
Mill, John Stuart 9, 15, 20, 37–40, 167 National Lottery 155–6, 185
Milton Keynes Citizen 181 National Publishers’ Association 210
miners’ strike (1984) 85 National Union of Journalists (NUJ) 4, 63–4,
Minnesota News Council 282 70, 72, 82–7, 91, 103–4, 112–13, 117–29,
minority groups 131–3, 147, 189 133, 146, 148, 152, 183, 186, 200, 204–9,
minors, protection of 134–43, 192–3, 224; 219–20, 230, 235, 246, 249–52, 291–2
see also children Ethics Council 2, 196, 260, 276–7
The Mirror 32, 107–8, 123, 139, 150, 155, 157, text of code of conduct 303–4
222–3 text of code of working practices 305–6
misappropriation 280 naturalism and non-naturalism 18
misrepresentation 112–15, 205, 286 Neil, Patrick 220
mobile phones 63, 202, 245, 291, 297 Neil Report (2004) 118, 122, 243–4
Muhammad the Prophet, cartoons of 167, 273 Netherlands, the 48, 201, 283, 286–7
Moore, G.E. 17 neutrality 72, 79
Moors murders 216 New Nation 154
morality news
and commerce 46–7 definition of 24
and the consumer 47–9 percentage of newspaper space devoted to
as distinct from law 11 32–3
and a free press 6, 43 on radio and television 235–7
language of 17–18 News Chronicle 214
need for 10–11 news-gathering 23, 64, 94, 103, 112–30, 200,
and society 45–6 253, 291
JOUR_Z02.QXP 26/2/07 14:12 Page 330
330 I n d ex
ethical standards for 202 Paul, Noel S. 217

limitations on 49–51 Paxman, Jeremy 67
News International 61, 150, 222 payments
News of the World 52, 115, 118, 155, 164, 175, to criminals 51, 128–9
186, 194, 205, 214, 222 to witnesses 129, 216, 229, 232
Newspaper Proprietors’ Association 235 Payne, Sylvia 34
Newspaper Society 152, 206, 210, 258 pay-per-view television channels 43, 241
newsworthiness 22–8, 79 Pearce, Lord 217–18
Nicholls, Lord 108 Pendleton, J. 205, 217
Nietzsche, Friedrich 15 pension arrangements for journalists 211
‘no win no fee’ arrangements 193 The People 68, 110, 114
non-attributable briefings 178–9 Periodical Publishers’ Association 168
Nordic Conference on the Right to Privacy personal honour, protection of 129–30, 192–3,
(1967) 92, 95 258, 283, 286–7
Northern Ireland 132, 289 personal lives of journalists 184–5
note-taking 122–3, 204–5 Pew Centre for the People and the Press 40,
49
Oakland Tribune 280 Philips, David 287
Obcene Publications Act (1959) 258 philosophy, classical 6, 12–17
objectivism 17–18 photographs
objectivity 71–9 of children 142–3
The Observer 168, 222–3 taking of 117–18
‘off the record’ interviews 177–8 use of 281, 283
offence, causing of 39, 165–72, 253 see also pictures
by use of language 180–2 Pick Me Up magazine 34
Office of Communications (Ofcom) 64, 82, pictures
86–7, 91, 94, 99, 102–4, 113, 117, 133, 135, digital manipulation of 85–6, 143, 159, 277
148, 162, 167, 172, 195–200, 231, 242–6, transmission of 292
250–1, 268–72, 275, 296–7 use of 158, 165
Content Sanctions Committee 270–1 see also photographs
summarised principles of Broadcasting Code Pike, Lady 239
309 Pinker, Robert 113, 231, 264
Office of Telecommunications 268 pirate radio stations 236
Official Secrets Act 50 plagiarism 184, 286
O’Hagan, Martin 289 Poole and Dorset Herald 212
OK! magazine 34, 110 pornography 168, 286, 296–7
ombudsmen for newspaper readers 220 portal sites 293
‘on the record’ interviews 177 Porter, Lord 219
O’Neill, Deidre 24–5 Portugal 48
online journalism 164 positivism 73
ownership of the media 188, 191, 195, 240–2 Potter, Jeremy 238
prejudice 72
paedophilia 78–9, 186, 254 Prescott, John 85
Paine, Robert 31 Press Association 223
Paine, Thomas 37 Press Complaints Commission (PCC) 2–5, 34,
paparazzi 202, 230 47, 52, 62, 64, 72, 82, 84, 87, 91–7, 101–6,
Parent, W.A. 89 110–29, 133–5, 138–48, 153–6, 178, 180,
parenting orders 137 183, 185, 187, 193, 196–202, 208, 218–33,
Parker Bowles, Camilla 222 242, 246–54, 260–6, 277, 280, 286, 290,
Parliament, journalists’ relations with 61–2 296
party conferences 160 amendments to code of practice 255
Patten, Chris 61 full text of code of practice 298–302
Paul, Henri 230 working of 261
JOUR_Z02.QXP 26/2/07 14:12 Page 331
Index 331
Press Council 138–9, 153, 170–1, 175, 180–5, radio

210–21, 230, 260–1, 276 invention and development of 234–6
Appointments Commission 218, 221, 226–7, power of 206
260 Radio Authority 240–1, 250
press cuttings, journalists’ use of 180 Radio Luxembourg 236
Press Standards Board of Finance (Pressbof) Radio-Television News Directors’ Association
221, 225–9, 260–1 (US) 282
Preston, Peter 48 Randall, David 56–7, 153
presumption of innocence 127–8, 156, 186, rape victims 138–9, 144
192, 198, 252, 257, 285–6 readers, journalists’ loyalty to 59–60
pre-trial publicity 156, 252, 257 Reading Evening Post 193
Prichard, H.A. 14 reality TV 6, 287
Prime Minister’s Office 178 reconstructions of events 83, 162
prior restraint 261 recording of conversations and interviews
privacy 115–16, 122–3, 176, 281
case studies on 106–11 Redcliffe-Maud, Lord 218
definition of 88–92, 226 Redditch Advertiser and Redditch Indicator 144
false 100–1 Reed, T.A. 122, 204–7
history of 94–7 Rees Mogg, Lord 239
invasion of 6, 34–5, 47, 51, 88, 91–2, 102, Referendum Party 86
112, 154, 193, 208, 219, 222–6, 231, 242, refugees 134, 172, 186, 265
253–4, 260, 269, 278, 280, 285 registration of journalists 48, 208, 284
language of 99–101 regulation of the media 190–2
protection of 45, 51–2, 91–6, 157, 200–1, for broadcasting 188, 267–76
237, 252, 277 history of 204–45
right to 91–103, 224, 252, 257 for the internet 296
Privacy Commissioner of the PCC 264 in other countries 278–90
Privacy and Media Intrusion, House of for the press 187, 257–67
Commons Select Committee on 242 systems for 196–200
Private Eye 125–6, 130 see also self-regulation; statutory regulation
Privileges Committee of the House of regulatory bodies, addresses of 312
Commons 48, 214 relatives of criminals and victims 144–5, 186
profit motive 44 religion 10, 13–14, 166, 169
promises, making and keeping of 182, 249 reparation, concept of 16–17
promotional activities 127 Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) 288–9
pronunciation 182 reputation, damage to 130, 165, 198, 252–3,
proprietors, journalists’ loyalty to 61 257–8, 285
protection of sources see sources restraints on the media 191, 195
public bodies, admission to meetings of Reuters 235
214 reviews in the media 124–5, 152
public buildings, access to 116–17 Richard and Judy 271
public interest and the public interest defence Richards, Ed 268
42, 48, 51, 91, 93, 96, 99–104, 108–10, right to know 9, 37–8, 42, 51, 91, 128, 223, 252
113–18, 128–9, 145, 154, 162, 202, 222, right of reply 83–4, 261
241, 244, 248, 253–4, 280 rights, definition of 19–21
public relations (PR) 160, 182, 196–7, 248, 295 rights-based element in codes of conduct 251–2
public service broadcasting (PSB) 5, 188–90, Roberts, Geoffrey 239
242–4, 275 Robertson, Drew 221
publication, decisions about 149–64 Robertson, Geoffrey 208–9, 284
Rock, Paul 23
quality of published information 51–5 role models 91
Quinn, Francis 166, 258 Romford Recorder 214
quotes, use of 179–80 Rose J 98
JOUR_Z02.QXP 26/2/07 14:12 Page 332
332 I n d ex
Rosnow, Ralph N. 29–31 slant in reporting 72–3, 86

Ross, D. 95 Slater, Sally 32
Ross, Jonathan 161 Smith, Chris 155, 230
Ross, Sir William David 16–17, 209 snatch pictures 35
Royal Commissions on the Press Snoddy, Raymond 61, 205
1947–49: 24, 27, 92–4, 123–5, 209–11 Society of Professional Journalists (US)
1961–62: 94, 215–16 281
1974–77: 42, 60, 95, 218–20 Socrates 14
royal family 91, 106, 207, 213–14, 221–2, 230 Solti, Sir George 53
Ruge, Mari 24–6 sound effects 163
rumour 29, 69, 80 sources of news stories 66–9, 77–80, 118–23
Runciman, Dame Ruth 266 protection of 83, 119–22, 253, 283
Rusbridger, Alan 194 South Africa 201
Rushdie, Salman 172 Spacks, Patricia M. 29
Spain 49–50
Sanders, Karen 3 Spark, David 2
Sanderson, Terry 169 Spencer, Earl 52, 96, 230
Schlesinger, Philip 23 spent convictions 99
schools ‘spoilers’ 63
access to 117 sponsorship of broadcast programmes 152
exclusions from 140–2 Sport newspapers 53, 66, 116, 144, 168, 221,
Scoopt 292 223
Scotland 99, 181–2 sporting events 186, 241
Scottish Daily Mail 143 stalking 106, 117
second editions of newspapers 184 stamp duty 195
Second World War 206 Stannage, James 272
secrets 88–90 The Star (ceased publication in 1960) 214;
Section 39 orders 137 see also Daily Star
Sedley J 110 state of nature 19
Selborne, Earl of 213–14 status, social 31, 100, 102, 130
self-improvement, duty of 17 statutory regulation of the media 197–201,
self-regulation by the media 5, 93, 196–9, 224, 230, 233, 297
218–21, 224–5, 228–30, 233 stigmatizing language 146
Selsdon Committee (1934) 235 Stonehouse, John 237
sensationalism 79–82, 205–7, 220 Straw, Jack 155
sensitivity, journalistic 174 ‘strict liability’ contempt 45
September 11th 2001 attacks 59, 80 subjectivism 17–18
Sergeant, John 161 subscription television 241
server-based technology 188 subsidies 195
sexual misconduct 259–60 subterfuge 113–15, 118, 175
Shakespeare, William 129 Sugar magazine 267
Shannon, Richard 232 suicide 97, 130, 147, 162, 232–3, 292
Shaw, Colin 239 The Sun 32, 34, 54, 61, 82, 85, 106, 126, 130,
Shawcross, Lord 215, 218, 220 133, 141–2, 150, 155, 164, 167, 181, 194,
Shear, Graham 164 280
Shintaku J 71 Sunday Dispatch 214
shorthand 122 Sunday Graphic 214
Silber J 110–11 Sunday Mercury 155
Simmons, C.J. 210 Sunday Mirror 114
Sinclair, Robert 2 Sunday Pictorial 212
Sinn Fein 50, 239 Sunday Telegraph 114, 154, 214
Sky TV 159; see also BSkyB suppression of news stories 149–52, 183, 289
slander 38, 51, 286 Sutcliffe, Sonia 130, 194
JOUR_Z02.QXP 26/2/07 14:12 Page 333
Index 333
Sweden 44–5, 51, 85, 128, 133, 199–201, 204, ‘two-ways’ 161–2
250–1, 283–6, 294 Tyson, Mike 32
‘tag-along raids’ 162 UK Independence Party 86

takeovers of newspapers 267–8 UK Press Gazette 57, 223
target audiences 27–8, 157, 173 undergraduate programmes in journalism 1–2
taste, standards of 165–6, 169–72, 236–9, 253, United Nations
258, 286 Convention on the Rights of the Child 134
Tate Modern 32 Declaration of Human Rights 19, 51, 91,
Taylforth, Gillian 194 130, 252, 278, 280
Taylor, Lord 285 United States 44, 59, 130, 204, 207, 250, 253,
Taylor, John 168 258, 278–82
Teachers for Peace 175 Constitution of 1, 20, 38, 279–82
Tebbutt, Melanie 29, 31 unused material, requests for 129
technical imperative 58 urban myths 68
Teenage Magazine Arbitration Panel (TMAP) utilitarianism 15, 150
168, 266–7
text of Guidelines 310–11 Venables, John 24–7
telephone conversations, taping of 115–16 vetting of journalists’ copy 182
telephone interviews 180 victims of crime 142–5
television, commercial 235, 240 Vietnam War 165
television franchises 240, 242 Viewers and Listeners Association 166
television programme contractors 237–8 Viglen Computers 123
terrorism 49–50, 132, 259, 292 Viner, George 219
Tetra (company) 120 voting behaviour 40
Thatcher, Margaret 39, 85, 214, 281 vulnerable groups 131–4, 208, 232, 259
Thompson, Gazza 221 amongst adults 143–8
Thompson, Mark 108, 169, 244, 273 minors 134–43
The Times 32, 61, 183
Times/Mirror Centre for the People and the Wacks, Raymond 89
Press see Pew Centre Wade, Sir William 52
Today programme 112, 161, 243 Wakeham, Lord 186, 225–31, 261, 290
Tomlinson, Hugh 108 Walden, Brian 95
topical events 27 Wales 181–2, 189
trespass 281 war reporting 150, 293
trial procedures, fairness of 156–7, 192, 198, Webb, Maurice 209
252–3, 257 webcams 162
tribunals, statutory 200; see also employment weblogs (blogs) 291, 297
tribunals websites 164, 293, 295
trust in the media 12, 52, 149 Weekly World News 53, 68
trustworthiness Wellington, Duke of 124
of reporting 119, 253 Wessex, Countess of 115
of sources 118–19 West, Frederick 127–8
truth-seeking 65–78, 83, 201 West, Rosemary 129, 170, 229, 294
and accuracy 68–71 W.H. Smith (retailers) 168
and impartiality 74–8 whistle-blowers 121
and objectivity 71–4 Whitaker, Brian 149–50
truth-telling 253 Whitehouse, Mary 166
Tully, Mark 53 Whittam-Smith, Andreas 220
Tusa, John 53 Wilde, Oscar 35
TV Without Frontiers (TVWF) Directive of the Wilkes, John 37
EU 290 William, Prince 140, 186, 230
Tweedy, Cheryl 34 Wilson, Sir Richard 178
JOUR_Z02.QXP 26/2/07 14:12 Page 334
334 I n d ex
Winston, Lord 181 York, Duchess of 222

Wintour, Charles 60 Yorkshire on Sunday 155
witness contributors 291–2 Young, Jock 25
witnesses, payments to 129, 216, 229, 232 Younger Committee 92, 95, 217, 237
Woolf, Lord 110 Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act (1999)
Worksop School 141 137, 140
World Association of Press Councils 290
World Cup 2006 competition 235, 245 Zambia 267
World Wide Web 68, 294–5 Zeta Jones, Catherine 3, 35, 98, 110
Zimbabwe 289
The X Files 66, 294
JOUR_Z02.QXP 26/2/07 14:12 Page 335

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FROST JOURNALISM ETHICS AND REGULATION

JOURNALISM ETHICS AND REGULATION SECOND EDITION

This comprehensive volume addresses the ethical considerations,

Cover photograh by Reuters/

This book has been written for students

9781405835367_COVER.indd 1 28/2/07 14:55:03

We work with leading authors to develop the

Under a range of well-known imprints, including

To find out more about the complete range of our

School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts

Pearson Education Limited

and Associated Companies throughout the world

Visit us on the World Wide Web at:

First published 2000, as Media Ethics and Self-Regulation

© Pearson Education Limited 2007

ISBN: 978-1- 4058-3536-7

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Typeset in Sabon 10/12.5pt by 3

The publisher’s policy is to use paper manufactured from sustainable forests.

1 What are ethics? 9

2 News: towards a definition 22

4 The good journalist 56

5 Truth, accuracy, objectivity and trust 65

6 Privacy and intrusion 88

7 Gathering the news 112

8 Reporting the vulnerable 131

9 Deciding what to publish 149

10 Taste and decency; harm and offence 165

11 Professional practice 174

Personal lives 184

13 History of print regulation 204

14 History of broadcast regulation 234

15 Codes of conduct as a regulatory system 246

16 Regulation systems in the UK 257

17 The experience abroad 278

18 The future 291

Appendix 1 PCC Code of Practice 298

AP Associated Press (a US news agency)

We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

of Journalists about their National Certificate Examination which claimed that

government to act, particularly a government so concerned with its media image as

The structure of the book

I hope I have produced something that is readable, interesting and helpful.

This chapter discusses:

• Morality and the need for professional ethics

Ethics is defined by The Concise Oxford English Dictionary as ‘the science of

10 1 • What are ethics?

Why do we need morality?

If we lived in a world that contained no other people would we need to be moral?

Why do journalists need professional ethics? 11

Why do journalists need professional ethics?

The concept of an ethical journalist may seem to be a contradiction in terms. The

12 1 • What are ethics?

Our moral obligations can be explained by a number of different theories, some of

14 1 • What are ethics?

Utilitarianism is also widely accepted in the West as an ethical system. Jeremy

Kant: the categorical imperative

16 1 • What are ethics?

The language of morals 17